‘Bootstrapping’ your business is defined as starting a business with minimal resources. Essentially it’s a ‘do-it-yourself’ scenario where you aren’t using any funding other than your own. We at BossStart are intrigued by any successful business that has come into its own through this type of start-up process. This week we were fortunate enough to snag an interview with Shane Levi Gould, Creative Director and Founder of Fuel. If you’ve ever been involved in the Action Sports industry, as a participant or even a spectator, you’re most likely familiar with the Fuel clothing and accessory brand. Since the company was founded in 1992, it has gone on to remain steadfast in its “core image in a time of overblown commercialism and blatant exploitation of the industry.” Fuel has been dubbed ‘The Biggest Little Company’ and we’re going to tell you why…

What is Fuel?

“In the early 90′s all my friends were either pro skaters, motor-crossers, snowboarders, or surfers and we were travelling extensively all over the world competing. At that time I thought there wasn’t really a street-wear brand, so I was going to create my own. I was going to see if I could piggyback off my own success as a snowboarder and try to parlay that into an actual business. I always liked being creative so we started manufacturing different pieces from early on and grew it organically from there. We design in house and outsource for production.”

“Most people don’t have longevity or a life-long career, so starting a business is fairly common in action sports. We are a very small company. That makes us an individual, unique and very approachable as opposed to the Billabongs, Hurleys, etc.”

“I was on the road travelling, and I didn’t have a lot of money. I thought, ‘Lets make some t-shirts’. It was pretty basic in the beginning. There was no 5-year structure or real business plan. I had a friend who was a pro-skater so we got together and he sold to the skaters and I to the snowboarders, and we all rode motor-cross and surfed as well. From that point it was ‘game-on’ and it built up as we went. By 1997-98 we were being sold at about 500-700 stores in America and maybe in 10 different countries. It grew very quickly back then because there wasn’t a lot of clothing companies out there that catered to action sports. We ended up having a lot of superstars with our brand because it was kind of unheard of. We just happened to catch it at the right time and do well with spreading our name. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that the market became terribly saturated with so many little companies everywhere. That really hurt the market. What happened was bad business. People weren’t running stores correctly and didn’t know how to budget themselves or the companies weren’t doing their job correctly to fulfill the orders. It was a really tough time. So the companies that made it through the early 2000′s were either bought out by bigger companies or went out of business.”

“Fuel has really come a long way so now we’re really attractive to those outside distribution partners who are saying, ‘Hey we’re really interested in what you’re doing. How can we help?’ Now we’re getting into the process of licensing our master license in the next couple years with someone who can really help us with what we’ve built.”

The School of Fuel.

“Working with limited funds makes is really difficult to compete with the big guys. When we sell in the store we can get moved to the back pretty easily. The stores have to keep the ‘big guys’ happy and pay them first. Until you have the really big marketing dollars it’s hard to support that. Lucky for us we’ve got a really good following that keep us afloat and keep looking for that uniqueness, you know – something that’s not cloned out. I think you can look at a lot of brands and ask what happened – what made them so unsuccessful – like No Fear, SMP, and Counter Culture. There were so many businesses that were successful at one time and aren’t now. What we’ve got to constantly parlay at one time is: How do we keep it cool and still distribute it enough to pay our bills?”

“It takes stubbornness more than anything. I won’t give up. I’ve been told a thousand time that this isn’t worth it. I look at it and I know that there is a future for Fuel, it just hasn’t fully shown yet. Other companies see us and think that we’re playing the game better than most. But we’re realistically the small guys.”

As a guiding principle for his business, Shane says,

We under promise and over deliver,

“And it works very well for our athlete and our sales. I can’t say we’re doing it better than anybody else but I know that we make a better product and we have less money. No one out there in our range (financially) is making snowboard gear like we are. As far as products go we have a knack for doing it and a great facility to do it in. We cast a great big shadow on the wall and it makes us look bigger than we are. One of these days it will pay off: with the right partners and the right timing. I’ve got some big companies 100 times the size of us asking me how we do it.”

“It doesn’t run itself. Everyday there are challenges. There are four parts to our business:

• We have our wholesale side – We design and manufacture our products and there’s the shipping and sales.
• Second is licensing – We license our name to other brands that use the ‘Fuel’ name and pay a royalty.
• Third is the private label program – People come to us and we manufacture for other labels.
• Last is our retail store (which I’ve had since 1996) – That’s our convenient way to display our product and the product of other companies we work with.

“As far as a typical day goes I spend time on every avenue of our business. It’s a lot of work. It’s no easy day for sure.”

Fill Up With Fuel.

It’s pretty clear that Shane has a clear vision for his company and surviving 20 years in an evolving retail industry is nothing to scoff at. Especially when it’s still a private company. We wanted to know a little bit more about how Shane has hung in there:

“Retail is always up and down with summer as its peak. We keep it as simple as we can. For us, it’s not about how many employees we have; it’s about how well you do with what you have.”

“Licensing is our strongest avenue. We’ve made a name, a brand, and people want to use it so they pay a fee for it. We’ve got 6 licenses right now and that does pretty well. Most of them are long term. It’s like franchising a restaurant. We’ve had our snowboard outerwear licensed since 99. We’ve worked out several deals that are monumental for us. We sell wholesale to stores, distributors, and online. Online has always been very strong for us. We market through a community website that’s geared toward the action sports community and we have a very large following. It’s a nice avenue to connect the riders with products. We’re connected with over 40,000 through hookit.com. We’ve entrenched ourselves in the company of a great community.”

“Just to see someone compliment us on what we’re doing is all the reward we need. It’s really something to see an order come in from another country, and you know they have access to any other thing in the world and they picked your product. There are so many southern California brands and people buy ours when everything in the world is in their backyard. That to me, is success. Its not necessarily financial but it lets us know we have something here. We try to do our best to keep them motivated and happy.”

“There’s a lot to running a business. There’s no question about it. People kind of get into these things and they don’t really look at it to see how it works. Most are underfinanced and undereducated. I started with $1200 and knew that if I went out of business it didn’t matter because I didn’t have any money. At the end of the day, what matters is that you’re educated and understand the risks that you are taking.”

“Fuel IS passion. It’s what is inside you that makes you feel like you have something to be an individual about; to be creative about. If you’re really good at something and you’re putting your mind and passion into it: that’s what Fuel is. People don’t have to wear our clothes to get that. I don’t care if you are Ricky Carmichael or Ryan Sheckler, Tony Hawk or the ‘average Joe’ – there IS that fire inside. We just try to implement and show that so people get out there and do it.”

To learn more about Shane Levi Gould & Fuel, please visit:

Website: Fuelclothing.com

TouTube: Youtube.com/keepfuelingthefire

Facebook: Facebook.com/pages/Fuel/108244984533?ref=mf

Twitter: Twitter.com/#!/fuelclothing