“At the end of the day, we make T-shirts. We are not saving the world. That's actually a core value of ours. As we make T-shirts, we're not saving the world. We recognize, you know, your life isn't going to be radical, altered or changed. It's just a T-shirt.” Connor Hitchcock

Founder and CEO of Homefield Apparel, Connor Hitchcock, discussed the importance of extreme fanship, dedication to niches, and becoming a premium brand among other pieces of insight. In the second episode, he’ll explain the trials and tribulations of breaking through a saturated industry.

Transcript:

Carolyn Hadlock:

Today we have Connor Hitchcock with us, and we are doing the Beautiful Thinkers podcast edition. So, I also have Joshua and Mark with me. And it's so nice to be actually in the room with you. Connor founded Homefield, and one of the reasons that the students wanted to talk to him is the theme this season is saturated. We are exploring that in a multitude of ways. And Connor, the reason Homefield came up was looking at your company through the lens of a very saturated category. I think the arc of this conversation is how do you stay scrappy and scale. I think that is what we're interested in hearing about. Mark jump in, I think there is a leading question you want to just start the conversation with.

Mark Holder:

I just wanted to start with your mission as a whole home field mission in that, staying with the high-quality goods and also having that thoughtful design and sort of connecting with the culture. Breaking through that saturated apparel market, how necessary is that unique and thoughtful quality?

Connor Hitchcock:

You hit on the word thoughtful. Myself and my co-founder, Christa who’s also my wife, we both are huge college sports fans. I grew up a huge IU fan. I went to IU. Christa's dad played football at Michigan, and she grew up in Michigan, going to Michigan football games every Saturday. So, we both recognized a lack of what we felt was thoughtful, collegiate apparel in the market. So that's actually why we first started making it. And by thoughtful meaning, things that got to my experiences that didn’t just say the school’s name across the chest. However, licensed collegiate apparel, to what's been referenced a couple times already, is a very saturated market. Oversaturated. I felt that we had a better product than what was in these channels anyway. But, my first opening, when talking about licensing, was direct to consumer through our website. And so that's where I was able to say, okay, well, give me a chance then in direct to consumer. Which is my background anyway, direct to consumer marketing and ecommerce. So, I felt like we were the best team to do it with Chris's design background and my background in direct to consumer. So, that was our initial pitch to schools and still schools were very hesitant to give us a license because they say, “Oh, we have t shirt providers already They can just go up on their own website.” But, we beat a lot of them to the punch there.

Carolyn Hadlock:

If thoughtful is a core word, is there a mission outside of that?

Connor Hitchcock:

Thoughtfulness for us extends in every direction. So, it starts with the core product, right? You know, I think some companies try to create these mission statements that are far more than what they actually do. It's like we make T-shirts. At the end of day, we make T-shirts. That's actually a core value of ours. We make t-shirts. We're not saving the world. We recognize, you know, your life is going to be radically altered or changed is just a T-shirt. We're not trying to, you know, globally dominate. We're trying to make a great product and have some fun along the way.

Joshua Fugate:

You originally started with Hoosier Proud, and it wasn't selling t-shirts, was it?

Connor Hitchcock:

So, at first, yeah, you're right. It was Hoosier Proud, and it was when I was a student at IU. In 2014, we did State of Indiana specific stickers. I walked around Bloomington and walked around Indianapolis, went door to door with, selling these stickers to these stores. And then a year in, you know, I'd set up an Instagram page, set up a website. They asked for t shirts, and I lied and said, we did make t shirts and we didn’t.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Like every good entrepreneur does.

Connor Hitchcock:

That's right. And so, I texted Christa, who at the time was then girlfriend. She was at Miami of Ohio, and she's the design background. And I said, “Hey, can you design a few shirts along these parameters?” And she did. I figured out where to get them made. Eventually I taught myself how to screen print, and so I was doing so in my apartment right across from classic lanes. So, yeah, I was doing that when I was a student, but it was Hoosier Proud. Indiana specific stuff, not Indiana University, just the state of.

Joshua Fugate:

Going into that, there was never a plan of getting into college apparel right away, was there?

Connor Hitchcock:

No, no. You know, started off as a side project, it was growing, but I didn't really think I could do it full time. It was just something fun I like to do. Then Indiana, my final year, playing a bowl game against Duke, lined up for a field goal to send in a triple overtime. It was called No Good. It looked like it was good though. And so, all offseason Indiana Twitter, of which I frequented then and still frequent a lot now. Even with the burner account.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Smart.

Connor Hitchcock:

I know right. I can't, back in the day I could say a lot more stuff from the Homefield account. Everybody in the offseason was pretending to be really mad, but they were kind of a little mad about this meaningless bowl game. And they were all screaming “The kick was good.” So going into the next football season in 2016, I graduated. I was working in e-commerce and an hour before kickoff of the 2016 football season, I just put up a shirt that just said the kick was good. It got picked up like crazy among the Indiana blogs and on Twitter with the side project Hoosier Proud. So with that, I was able to use that design as an entry way to go talk to IU and say, “Hey, I think I have you from a marketing perspective and an e-commerce perspective. I think I have a unique pulse on the Indiana fan base. Would you be willing to give me a chance at a license?” And they said, “Yeah, sure.”

Carolyn Hadlock:

And you launched the company with just eight teams in Indiana, right?

Connor Hitchcock:

Mhm.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Talk about the licensing piece of it and the challenges that that created and then how you got over those.

Connor Hitchcock:

The Indiana market alone, there are plenty of businesses that do millions of dollars just in Indiana. That just takes so much time, though, right? So, if you're starting from scratch, you only have eight schools and only two of them are power five with Indiana, Purdue. And then you know, Butler is your third biggest school, it just takes time to establish a brand. We burned through money quickly. We didn't raise much money, relatively speaking, to raising money. And so, it was pretty sink or swim and licensing is difficult because a smaller school took a chance on you which is awesome.

Carolyn Hadlock:

And that was part of your growth strategy?

Connor Hitchcock:

Yes, a lot of small schools. A bigger school they won't because you pose more of a risk, and you have to prove that you're not a risk. You have to prove that you're doing something unique and new, otherwise you're just simply a risk. You know? We got chances with Indiana and Purdue. We proved it out with some mid-majors, and we were able to show other larger institutions how well we were doing with mid-majors, which we are over-indexed for sure. So, it took a lot of time. And it's funny how competitive it was too, because nobody really wanted to be the first mover. We had a launch strategy back in the day called Big New Saturday. It went very well, but it took Tulane and Hawaii doing really well, for a school like Michigan State to be like, “Oh, that's kind of cool what you're doing at Tulane in Hawaii. I'll give you a chance.” And then another basketball school in Syracuse was like, “Oh, Michigan State is doing it? Sure.” And then UConn was like, “Well, Syracuse is our rival. I guess we could do that.” Auburn thought it was cool, so they jumped on board. And at the time we were releasing the rankings of which school had done the best launch wise. So Auburn was number one, and that's when we got a call from Alabama and they were like, “Hey, that can't stand.”

Carolyn Hadlock:

Competition.

Connor Hitchcock:

Right, yeah! We were able to play some schools off each other. But the licensing, you know, five years now we have 180 licenses. So licensing is very tricky in a lot of ways. And we've been very fortunate because we were able to prove out that we were doing something totally unique, not just in concept, but in reality, with sales frankly. And the reaction on social media.

Joshua Fugate:

You mentioned Big New Saturday, and part of your approach that you said was going after the small schools. Well, there's hundreds of small schools across the country.

Connor Hitchcock:

Yeah.

Joshua Fugate:

And each small school has some things significant about them that's different from all the others. How did Homefield go about doing the research of all of the small schools and figuring out what makes those schools' fan bases tick?

Connor Hitchcock:

It was part fan base and part also just their logos, right? Tulane, for example, we had a great call with them, it’s the Green Wave. And their colors are this beautiful light blue. They got some teal in there. They got some green in there. They have a pretty ardent, I mean it’s a small private school in New Orleans, but their football program used to be in the SEC back in the day.

Even now, recently they just beat USC in the New Year’s Six bowl this past year. They won the AAC last year. They won it this year. There's a pretty strong support online, so it was observing a community online around Tulane football. Even though it was small, it was powerful, and that's why I reached out to Tulane. They agreed with the vision of what we were doing at the time. I mean, even a bunch of mid-majors would tell us no all the time. But when we launched them, they were the first school of Big New Saturday. We launched them and not only did the Tulane grads flock to it, but a ton of people just love the green wave. There are very few people who hate Tulane. Unless you're like a conference rival, right? So if you're an Indiana grad, what reason do you have to hit Tulane?

Carolyn Hadlock:

Yeah.

Mark Holder:

Yeah. I mean, looking on your Twitter, it seems like you, from the beginning, have really understood the importance of that personality. Being obviously unique, but also being humorous and relatable. So, in the beginning, was that thought out and was that strategic? Or was it just sort of you? And, you know, how has that kind of evolved as you guys have moved into the spotlight?

Connor Hitchcock:

It was thought out. Who cares if I say, “Go shop the Michigan collection, they just want a game.” And I drop a link in. Nobody cares. After a year in, you know, like I talked about earlier, it was tough. When we launched some of these schools, things weren't looking great. We had to do something different and unique in order to establish something different and unique. So that's what we did with the Twitter account. At the time, there's three employees, myself and Christa being two of them. And I decided in the summer 2019, like I've enjoyed, you know, being on Twitter as a lurker for a long time. Might as well just start talking to people like, what's a way that engages me? And maybe I just started talking that way from multiple accounts. And so, it coincided at the time with a campaign, and what was maybe called a prophecy with the Crimson Corey blog at the time. It was run by a couple friends of mine, run by a different crew now, but we had had a few beverages one evening and one of our friends said, “I think Indiana is going to win nine football games this year.” As we all have associated with Indiana, we understand how hard winning nine football games is.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Yeah, that's bold.

Connor Hitchcock:

Very, very bold. And we had won five football games the year prior. He tweeted it out from the Crimson Quarry account that Indiana is going to win nine football games. He wrote a whole article, and another friend of ours at the table said, “Yeah, man 9WINDIANA.” And so, they started the proclamation of 9WINDIANA. And we made a shirt that just said 9WINDIANA on it. We're just tweeting about Indiana football, in a funny way, basically all season from the Homefield account. We became known as the Indiana football brand. Indiana wins eight regular season games to set up the bowl game for the ninth win. And it got to the point where the IU Bloomington account was tweeting, “#9WINDIANA.” To the point where after Indiana beat Purdue in the bucket game, the eighth win, to go into the bowl game where they would play for the ninth. Players were grabbing the camera, the ESPN camera, and screaming 9WINDIANA into the camera. People on like talk shows, on ESPN or wherever talking about college football, they would say, 9WINDIANA. It was like a whole thing. IU invited us to be the official vendor for all the festivities at the Gator Bowl. We had all these 9WINDIANA shirts. Then we go and we are up 13 on Tennessee, at the Gator Bowl, with 5 minutes left. I get all these texts. “Congrats man”, as though I had something to do with that. Indiana loses the football game. I tell that whole story because that was the tone we started to take on our social media.

Connor Hitchcock:

The hope is to build a brand, so it runs itself, right? So that people feel compelled enough and have a connection enough with your brand, that they're going to go tell other people and they can do the marketing for you. Think about it. I mean, you're so much more likely to go try or do something, or not do something, if a friend or someone trusted tells you.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Yeah, word of mouth.

Connor Hitchcock:

Right, that is all marketing folks are going for it. And so that's why we spend our time talking to the WKU Hilltoppers podcast. I'm in the DMs and I’ll be DMing from the homefield account, some random account with like 60 followers just because they're like, “Look what I found in my grandpa’s basement.” You know? Just some Marshall Thundering Herd flag or whatever. But if you tell five of your friends about a great experience with Homefield and they tell five of their friends and they tell five of their friends, it's exponential. It takes a lot of time, but over time that slow bake builds something completely different than the others who are just trying to throw money into ads. Which that has this time and place, and we spend money on advertising for sure, but…

Carolyn Hadlock:

But even then, it seems like you're doing pretty niche audiences. You're going to the smaller podcasts. One of the phrases we were talking about in marketing, is that phrase “The riches are in the niches,” because that is where you get your fan base. And I think that was one of the things that attracted these guys to your brand is how well and how deftly it may be 60 people, but they are rabid fans. Could you talk about just fan ship and how you fanned the flames of that?

Connor Hitchcock:

Yeah, riches are in the niches I've never heard that before. I like it. So, I was saying earlier college sports are so communal. We talk about thoughtfulness as the core of our brand. I have to understand everything about the end customer. I'm making this apparel for people like me, but they may cheer for Purdue, or they cheer for Western Michigan or whomever. But I want to understand their experience and enhance their experience, which is something I love so much in college sports. It's understanding the end consumer and what they want and how they interact, and then tailoring our experience for them.

Mark Holder:

So, it seems like Homefield has kind of been built on seeing opportunity and really capitalizing on it. First from the Pinstripe Bowl, which wasn’t even Homefield, that was way back in the day. But seeing that opportunity, capitalizing. That moves into something new like Big New Saturday, where you see that Twitter trend, you see the personality you can have on Twitter and capitalize on that. I want to talk about the future and where you guys may be going with that, because you guys just recently dropped an Indianapolis Colts line.

Connor Hitchcock:

Sure did.

Mark Holder:

So, I think you can feel where this question is going to go. Are professional sports something that Homefield may be striving towards? And is that another window that you guys are trying to jump through?

Connor Hitchcock:

Funny enough, all the pro-opportunities have been inbound. So, I'll say we are not pursuing NFL licensing, we're not pursuing NBA, MLB, WNBA, none of that right now. We feel like we are so early on in what we're doing. We're only five years old as a brand, and celebrated our fifth birthday in August. And there's a few cool angles we can take with that to tell a brand story. However, I've seen every brand that has tried to do what we've done. They get you licensing, they use it as a stepping stone, and they leave the college fans in the dust. Its X, Y, Z brand used to. This brand used to. This brand used to be worn in college. To that point earlier about niches, you know, college to a lot of people seems like a niche compared to the NBA or the NFL because you have arguably the same size pie. The NFL trumps all. It's much bigger, but the pro leagues divide 30 ways versus colleges that’re divided thousands of ways. If you go power five, its 65 ways. So, it's a lot harder to market, right, because you can scale marketing to 30 audiences.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Yeah.

Connor Hitchcock:

You can get the same result better than you can hundreds. But we actually love it. We think there's just a greater passion there. So, you know, you probably can't throw money into Facebook ads or Instagram the same way and get the same result with college that you can't with the NFL or the NBA. In fact, I know you can't because I have friends who are doing the NFL and NBA. But you also won't receive the same passion for the brands that we have because it's college.

Carolyn Hadlock:

What do you think are the benefits from starting a company in college apparel and sports from Indiana?

Connor Hitchcock:

Yeah, Indiana as a state really cares a lot about sports in general, particularly high school and college sports, right? Indiana, I mean, high school basketball, for example, is 15 of the 16 biggest gyms in the country are in Indiana. Right. The NCAA is obviously based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Purdue basketball, both men's and women's, have really storied histories that people are selling games out for time immemorial. Right. The state is known as the home of basketball anyway. Yeah, it's a good environment.

Mark Holder:

As you're moving into your future, what do you envision for your future just in general? You know what, what's the next step for home field?

Connor Hitchcock:

Yeah, totally. It's funny to think about going from stickers. To now, jumping on these jackets that are significantly, like 30 times the dollar amount.

Joshua Fugate:

We were going through and researching and scrubbing like the old Hoosier Proud Instagram. It was just so funny, back in 2016. That's what, seven years ago? Pocket t-shirts were still a hot commodity.

Connor Hitchcock:

Yeah. You know, with Homefield as I mentioned earlier that we're not saving the world. We just make t-shirts. A lot of brands try to convince people that they are saving the world, with whatever they do.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Yeah, especially now.

Connor Hitchcock:

Yes, especially now. Then also, my opinion is they try to move too quickly from their core products. They do a bunch of other stuff, and that's because there's a lot of pressure on them to, you know, just keep going up and up and up. Just keep scaling, scaling, scaling. We're certainly growing, but there's a lot of greed that maybe blinds brand direction, in my opinion. And so, we're going to keep doing the core stuff we do, but we're also going to add statement pieces, you know, like the jackets. Those have been a huge hit. Will they be in style five years from now? Maybe, or they may not be. But something else will be, you know, to Josh’s point, pocket tees. Those were a thing six years ago, seven years ago.

Carolyn Hadlock:

They may come back.

Connor Hitchcock:

They may come back. But it's responding to trends we see. Just filling the need for the collegiate sports fan. Every Saturday, Michigan Stadium seats 108,000 people. Right? And there are tens of millions of people who cheer for the Michigan Wolverines. Does every single one of them want to buy a $34 T-shirt or a $72 hoodie? No, but a good portion do. So that we are just scratching the surface. I come to IU, and I teach class once a year, and even this morning I was at the business school talking to a class and most people had never heard of Homefield. They’re college kids on the campus that I built this thing. So, we've got so far to go even with that. Let's continue to develop those relationships within the fan base, and add those statement pieces, responding to what's in trend or providing something unique. But staying pretty core to what we do and just doing it well over a long period of time.

Carolyn Hadlock:

And I know you talked about the Saturday News, you stopped doing that and now you are doing the limited edition or limited runs?

Connor Hitchcock:

Yeah, yeah. So Big New Saturday ran for four seasons and we had to be using 50 schools or so in there. A couple of the words in there that make it key are Big. So, all the big schools we had launched already by the end of it. And then New. So, if we've already launched the school that was an operative term. Even though we would do refreshes, you know, we drop Penn State, it's a massive launch and then a year later we’d do a refresh adding some more pieces. It just wasn't the same because it wasn’t this pent-up demand. Now we have pivoted more that we have all these schools to provide fresh apparel that you can wear every year. You know, you want something new, you want a new look. These jackets, for example, have been a great one. It fits with the calendar Big New Saturday. We drop it in June. There's nothing going on, so people pay attention to us. But now it's how can we get you basketball themed apparel every year? How can we get you stuff for football? How can we do something for when the leaves start to change, right? Trying to make sense for what's going on in the calendar, other sports wise, weather wise, all of that. So, some of its limited run. Some of it's just, hey, new T-shirts to just freshen things up.

Carolyn Hadlock:

How much of your consumer base is repeat purchasing?

Connor Hitchcock:

50%, which is really high in five years. And I mean, the typical direct to consumer brand, you're looking for 15 or 20% as a goal. It's making sure they have that great experience and that we're providing something that they like that causes that. We know if we get you in as a customer, you're probably going to come back, which is great for us.

Joshua Fugate:

You say it's 15 to 20% is good, but knowing that you guys are at 50%, how does that make you and Christa feel as a business owner?

Connor Hitchcock:

It's really humbling. Again, five years ago in our basement wasn't that long ago. So, it's really humbling that people react the way they do to the brand. It's a fulfillment of the vision for sure. When we go and do pop ups to Ann Arbor at this bar, and there's a line of people out the door before we start the pop up, it's just very humbling that people would react the way they do. I feel very fortunate that we've achieved this success because, I mean, frankly, a lot of people have great ideas and are really good executers, and sometimes it just doesn't work out. You know, we were close to walking away a year in because it just wasn't working out. We were just fortunate that Indiana decided to have an uncharacteristic football season. I totally believe that they saved the brand, that they almost won nine football games.

Joshua Fugate:

Hey, they owed you for being such a loyal family.

Connor Hitchcock:

That's right. That's right. They finally left me back.

Carolyn Hadlock:

I know a lot of people tend to know you for your vintage and your premium. So, it's kind of a two-part question. Is the vintage just reprinting vintage ideas and does that help you bypass licensing? Or are you doing more of a retro and designing based on what was back then?

Connor Hitchcock:

More of the latter. Everything we do, we get approved by the school. So, if it's in reference to Indiana, you know, it doesn't say Indiana on it, but it's clearly in reference to it, we get it approved by the school and have to pay royalties on it. Sometimes we will recreate. If there is an iconic shirt, we'll recreate it. But most of the time it's doing research. Okay, this logo is used in this fashion in the eighties. We'll put our own spin on it. That's Homefield, right? Maybe we will draw words from the fight song. Or maybe there is a marketing campaign from that football season that the athletic department used, and we can use some of that verbiage. We try to make it authentic to the time. We also have another wrinkle where we use old logos and present them in a new way.

Carolyn Hadlock:

So why do you think the vintage is so hot right now?

Connor Hitchcock:

I think it is here to stay, in that it is just different than what you currently see. Anything that's different is always going to be, you know, there's so many logos that people hated when they were the primary logo and the second, they're no longer the primary logo, people love them. Like I think about the Detroit Pistons jerseys, the teal ones that they had for four years. I lived in metro Detroit at the time and people hated those things. Now they're the throwback jerseys for the Pistons, right? Or the oval that Indiana wore on that our helmets for four years, people hate it at the time. It's objectively ugly. But I love it because I watched Antwaan Randle El wearing it and it’s no longer in use, right? So stuff like that, there's some nostalgia tie in and there's also something of, “Oh, that's different than what I normally see on Saturdays or during game.”

Carolyn Hadlock:

So premium, you're charging more. You came into the market charging more than the category. How did you make that decision and what advice do you have for people? Because that seems very counterintuitive. But talk about how you decided to go with the high pricing.

Connor Hitchcock:

Well, we're one, we're using premium materials. And so those cost more. In order to not lose money, you have to pay that. Additionally, royalties are a big percent of revenue. You know, I can't say publicly what percentage we pay, but if you're in the licensed collegiate space, you know, that it's about doubled the last ten years. So, you pay a lot back to the schools because it's an officially licensed product. We pay a lot to make the product. We pay our people well, and that's the factor of it, too. And we aren’t sorry about that and we’re going to keep doing that. So, at the end of the day, we think it's worth the value. And, you know, maybe you don't buy ten in a year, maybe you buy six. But we guarantee you it's going to be good. I guarantee you if something's wrong with the shirt, because that really something will be every once in a while, we're going to take care of it, no questions asked. Unless you are a massive, massive, massive brand, it's really hard to do what we do any cheaper than what we offer it at

Joshua Fugate:

I would say the one wrap up question, where can we find you on socials?

Connor Hitchcock:

Yes. So, the Homefield, Twitter or X account, I'm going to call it Twitter, is @HomefieldApparl. A P P A R L. That is because there is a limit to how many characters you can have in your handle. And we have kept it that way. Someone's squatted on the Homefield account for forever and we're never going to change it, even if we got access to it because it’s become a joke. On Instagram and Tik Tok search Homefield or Homefield apparel and that'll come up. But those are the three primary platforms that we are on for social.

Carolyn Hadlock:

As a marketer, I'm just impressed with just your focus and how you come in at a premium price point, even though you have to. But it just really seems thoughtful like you talk about. But I would say the other side of that coin is surprise. You're really good at that, and taking chances and staying risky. So I wish you guys well and I hope you stay scrappy and scale. We’ll continue to watch you from the sidelines.

Connor Hitchcock:

Awesome. Yeah, Thanks for having me. This was a great time.

Carolyn Hadlock:

Great. Well, thank you so much, Connor.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode. This episode was created and produced at the IU Media school as part of the Beautiful Thinkers Podcast, IU edition. To follow along this season, check out the Beautiful Thinkers on Instagram and TikTok. Special thanks to Natalie Ingles for our music and the students who researched and recorded this episode, Mark Holder, Joshua Fugate, and Tyler Mathews.