Why You Need to Be 'Delusional' to Build a Million-Dollar Athleisure Brand
A Shopify Masters interview in which host Adam Leter talks with Lanny Smith, founder of the athleisure brand Actively Black, about building an audience before launching a product. Smith describes his path from basketball to apparel, a launch on Black Friday 2020 that he says made 55,000 dollars on day one, selling out inventory far faster than planned, and why he warns people about the apparel business. Sponsor: Shopify, which presents the show (a free Shopify trial is linked in the description). PARTIAL COVERAGE: this note is based on the opening, the audience-building section, a middle section on belief and the apparel business, the closing and the description, and does not cover every exchange in the roughly 33 minute interview. All numbers and views are the speakers' own claims and are not independently checked.
Executive Summary (TL;DR)
A Shopify Masters interview in which host Adam Leter talks with Lanny Smith, founder of the athleisure brand Actively Black, about building an audience before launching a product. Smith describes his path from basketball to apparel, a launch on Black Friday 2020 that he says made 55,000 dollars on day one, selling out inventory far faster than planned, and why he warns people about the apparel business. Sponsor: Shopify, which presents the show (a free Shopify trial is linked in the description). PARTIAL COVERAGE: this note is based on the opening, the audience-building section, a middle section on belief and the apparel business, the closing and the description, and does not cover every exchange in the roughly 33 minute interview. All numbers and views are the speakers' own claims and are not independently checked.