Wouldn't it be cool if there was a better built backpack that cost the same? The beginning of Herschel. How to feel established from day one?
Dave Young:
Welcome to The Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I'm Stephen's sidekick and business partner Dave Young. Before we get into today's episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it's us, but we're highlighting ads we've written and produced for our clients. So here's one of those.
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Dave Young:
Welcome back to The Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here alongside Stephen Semple, as he usually does. Just before we start the countdown to record, he asked me if I'd heard of today's topic, which is Herschel what?
Stephen Semple:
It's called the Herschel Supply Company.
Dave Young:
Herschel Supply Company. They make backpacks. When you said backpacks, I immediately thought of the JanSport backpack that every kid in junior high ever owned. Business world seems to have in the last 20 years. Like the Swiss Army or whatever. There's a brand that you see those a lot, you see. There's some other brands, but I've not heard of this one.
Stephen Semple:
So first of all, warm them to my heart because they're a Canadian company.
Dave Young:
Oh, well, there we go. I'm guessing these are high-end backpacks that only really successful people can afford like you.
Stephen Semple:
They are, and I don't have one.
Dave Young:
Oh, well, never mind.
Stephen Semple:
But they are a really nice backpack and they are very high quality. And in fact, they were one of the companies that really led this charge in terms of backpacks becoming higher quality and higher design. And they were started in 2009, and today they're sold in 9,000 locations around the world.
Dave Young:
That's a lot of locations.
Stephen Semple:
Yeah. They are a massive success. And they were started by two brothers, Jamie and Lyndon Cormack. And again, as I like to point out, Canadians, and if you saw their backpacks, what's really interesting is if you saw them and took a look at it, given the way the logo is and the design and whatnot, you would feel like it was a really old company, not a company from 2009. And that was by design. That was very much intentional. They built this old and established feeling purposely. They both worked in apparel, and one of the things that they noticed was there was a gap in the marketplace. There were no stylish backpacks, and college students were using them and people were going to work with them, and there was nothing stylish. And today they also do duffels and suitcases and wallets and things along that line.
And how they came up with the name was an old prairie town near where they grew up in Saskatchewan, Herschel, this little town. And they would visit it as kids, and literally 18 people lived in this little town, and it was down in this little valley and it had this nice little hockey rink in curling rink and an old school that had been turned into a little local museum. And so they actually went and hung out there as kids. So Jamie moved away to Canmore and worked in mountaineering school, and he wanted to be a mountain guide. He studied this for four years. It takes a long time to be a mountain guide. And at one point his boss pulls him aside and says, "I'm not hiring you back." And he goes, "Well, why not?" He goes, "You're too young, you're too smart. I want you to be one of the people in the back of the helicopter coming up here on weekends, not working in the front."
Dave Young:
Wow. Okay.
Stephen Semple:
So he went back to the city, to school part-time and was doing graphics while working in a skateboard shop. And so he started a local skateboard magazine called Sequence,
