As promised in my first blog, I'd like to take you back to the early, almost comical at times, beginnings of Hincapie Sportswear. Since there are a lot of details to remember I'll skim through the important parts, at least until we start the transition into Colombia.
In 2001 right after the Sept 11 attack I got an e-mail by a then Italian pro who wanted to come to a race which I promoted (and still promote) - the Michelin Cycling Classic. Roby (the Italian Pro) was going to come over with a group of friends but they all pulled out after Sept 11th so he ended up coming alone. I remember back then he spoke almost no English but somehow we managed to communicate. Roby stayed for about 2 weeks and then returned back home to Italy. We kept in contact and around January I asked him if he could source some clothing for the Fairway Subaru team I was running. Roby, who was also a designer, designed and sourced the clothing for us and created a Hincapie logo to put on the jersey. Once the clothing arrived, local friends and clubs began to ask questions about our kits and we got our first order shortly thereafter. For the first year, since I was still at "Office Space" I would come home after a full day of work and answer emails and voicemails from the very few customers we had. We sourced everything through the same factory in Italy, and figured things out as we went along. Every day brought some new challenge and we would somehow figure it out. Today seems to be no different in that respect.
In 2003 I decided to take the plunge and leave my full time job; we had gotten to a point where I would get home at night and just couldn't keep up with the workload, often going to bed after 1 AM. Roby and I found a 10' x 10' office and we moved the few things we had from our temporary attic office in January. Shortly after we hired Baker and then Drew came to work as an intern. 4 people in one office was a bit tight but we managed somehow. It's funny to go back and think about sorting through shipments in the hallway or designating one cube we borrowed as our retail storage space which consisted of a few ball caps and some random accessories.
After a year or so we purchased a building close by, and it seemed like all the space we would ever need. How wrong we were. Every year we've hired more people, stored more inventory and the growth continues for us to this day.
I remember sometime in 2003 we got a cycling cap order for 50 caps. Back then our source in Italy would only take 500 piece cap orders. To me it was an order - how could I say no? I have the "we'll figure it out somehow" mentality so I talked to my dad and had him put me in contact with Jorge, my uncle in Medellin, Colombia. Jorge had worked in textiles his whole life and was running a plant that produced jeans for Levi's. He had several hundred employees and a vast knowledge of the textile industry which ranged from fabrics, machinery, and manufacturing to skilled labor. I called Jorge and asked if he could make me these cycling caps and he said sure, having the same "we'll figure it out" mentality - "I don't know" is not in our vocabulary. Jorge began to do more and more hat orders for me, enough so that in 2003 shortly after I sent my first order he quit his job.
Although making cycling caps may sound easy, I got a taste of what he did when I went to visit in April 2003 to see how things were going. Since Jorge worked out of his house and at this point we owned no machinery, every single part of the process was sourced out
- I would email the order and art.
- David (my cousin) would download the image and save it to a disk.
- Jorge would take that disk to El Centro where they would make a color laser print out for him.
- Jorge would drive that print out to the screen company (I use the word "company" loosely as it was an old house in the ghetto with one screen machine from 1952).
- While the screens were being made Jorge would go buy enough fabric to produce the order.
- He would take that fabric to go get cut by a lady that used to work for him but who now worked at a hot dog stand at the bus station
- He would have to go get the visors cut in another town since they are plastic.
- Drive to the hot dog stand the next day with cut visors in a bag to go pick up the cut fabric (I'm not making up the hot dog stand part). She would keep our cut fabric under the counter until he came with cash to pick it up. Yes and I did eat a hot dog, well worth the trip
- Jorge would take all fabric and cut visors to the ghetto print shop
- Pick up all printed pieces and take them to get sewn
- Take all hats home and the whole family would count and individually box them
- Jorge would drive to UPS and manually fill out all export paperwork to ship
This was all for one hat order - the "we'll figure it out" took a lot more figuring than I had anticipated.
As time went on we started sending just jersey orders and we were still sourcing out the whole process. Sometime in 2004, they hired Gustavo and moved into a floor of a building with 2 computers, a few phones and a whole lot of hope. We slowly began bringing the process in-house, first with the paper printing, then cutting, then sublimation, and finally sewing. Each department started very small with one machine each, but as we sent more orders with a bigger variety of line items we would buy things as we needed them.
We slowly began to occupy the second floor of the building, then the 3rd, and then we ran out of space. In November of 2007, we moved into a new facility and shortly after bought the building next door. La Factoria is actually 2 very large houses built in the early 1900's that we completely renovated. Its not the normal factory one might imagine as we have wood floors, white tile and are in one of the older nicer neighborhoods in Medellin called Prado Centro, right down the block from the mayor's house.
We now have over 100 people combined, hundreds of machines and department heads for every segment of the business. Since we continue to grow the "we'll figure it out" mentality that has gotten us this far continues to move us forward. Tomorrow I'm going to go visit the Hot Dog lady for old times sake but this time we won't be picking up any fabric on the way to the ghetto.
Louis the Pattern Designer
Factory Rules and Regulations