Stitching Success: Artisanal Apparel with Alloy Growth Lab Director, Jeremy Fritzhand

Speaker 1: 0:04

Welcome to Side Hustle City and thanks for joining us. Our goal is to help you connect to real people who found success turning their side hustle into a main hustle, and we hope you can too. I'm Adam Kaler. I'm joined by Kyle Stevie, my co-host. Let's get started. All right. Welcome back everybody to the Side Hustle City podcast. We didn't know we were going to do a podcast today, but Jeremy Frittan came in and he is with Alloy and what they are doing is helping startups, helping small businesses, connecting people here in Hamilton County.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Catalyzing yeah, that's the term.

Speaker 1: 0:43

Collaborating, collaborating, all that good stuff, guys. So he is a startup expert, a small business expert, I would say at this point. I mean, you've been at Alloy for a long, long time and I wanted to bring him in today because we were going to chat about the state of the startup world, not just here in the Cincinnati area, but across the country. You know, what are VCs looking for now, what kind of money is out there, what kind of programs are available? Maybe you don't want to do a traditional tech startup and you just want to. You know, you want to start a business doing HVAC or whatever that is. Jeremy is an expert in that. So, jeremy, thanks for coming on the show.

Speaker 2: 1:23

Thanks for having me. It's great to be here. I love what you're doing at the Side Hustle podcast and, yeah, the state of startups is really exciting. There's a lot of new opportunities in AI and collaboration and community-based learning. People are really, I think, opening up to exchange of ideas more freely and so, yeah, it's really exciting, yeah, and last time you were on the show we were talking about something completely different.

Speaker 1: 1:56

And you have your own startup too, and you have it's essentially an apparel company, and you got this Peace Rise hat on. Tell us about it.

Speaker 2: 2:03

Most of my entrepreneurial endeavors in the last 15 years have centered around craft and textiles. I spent almost 10 years living and working in India doing grassroots entrepreneurial development work, specifically with a community of block printing artisans in Baguru, rajasthan, and for the last 500 years they've been mastering the craft of hand block printing, which is an ancient technique dating back thousands of years. In many places in India block printing I mean in many places in the world. Block printing was one of the first forms of embellishing cloth and customizing your apparel what you're wearing. Moved back to Cincinnati about two and a half years ago, wanted to embed into the local startup scene and the community and been really fortunate to have the opportunity to work with an amazing, diverse, innovative pool of startups all swimming together in this ecosystem.

Speaker 2: 3:10

So at Alloy we have a few pieces of programming that we've been running. One of the oldest is morning mentoring every Thursday from 9 to 10 am. It's a pitch feedback. We get a group of mentors together, uh, from various backgrounds. Participant gives a 10 minute pitch, 40 minutes Q and a. They get asked 10, 10 minutes of questions to the mentors. Uh, mentors fill out a scorecard and feedback. We compile that and send it back to the startup. So that program has been running for almost 20 years, with the Queen City Angels a local angel investing group, over 200 accredited investors from the region and across the US, tied up with the Angel Capital Association, which is coming to Ohio coming up their annual celebration. It's going to be in Columbus.

Speaker 1: 4:01

I wish to point out Queen City Angels is actually one of the highest rated, I think, if not the highest rated. So Scott Jacobs, a friend of mine, right, he's involved with Queen City Angels, but I believe Tony Shipley, who started, was one of the founders, I think, of Queen City Angels. He won an award and they were the top angel investing company in the country. So they've been around a long, long time. Before I was. You know, we did anything with Dotloop and actually Tony Shipley's son, blake Shipley, was one of our co-founders at Dotloop. So he did all of our finance stuff. He's a brilliant accountant, understands things, and he did a couple of his own startups too.

Speaker 1: 4:42

So you know it's very uh, cincinnati is very incestuous when it comes to the startup world and the advertising world, two industries here that everybody seems to be involved in in in some fashion or CPG of some kind, right, like it's just what it is. But alloy does a lot like our startup. The first real office we had was at alloy, which was before it was alloy. It was HCDC and HCBC and, believe it or not, when I was working at an agency back in the day, I did the website for HCDC, so I knew about it. Before it was really big and now it's a great program. So much I feel like a lot of programs like Alloy, like Centrifuse and stuff. They give so much to the startup community and they help in so many different ways Explain Alloy and how it's differentiated from other groups and maybe even talk to people that aren't from Cincinnati about the benefits of working with Alloy somehow.

Speaker 2: 5:40

Yeah, alloy has been around for 40 years. Our roots are in servicing the Small Business Administration 504 and 7A loan programs, which are federally backed loans for purchase of commercial real estate and heavy machinery targeted towards growing businesses. And then, in the 80s, the founders realized the need for additional startup support and there wasn't a business incubator in the region at the time. So, with the help of the county and the city, we purchased 1776 Mentor Ave and a couple of years later the building across the street rehabbed it into office and lab space, and then have been welcoming uh startups uh through the doors uh, ever since, and so it's a wide range of startups, from advanced materials to digital health, digital marketing, uh hardware software but it's not just.

Speaker 1: 6:45

It's not just startups, I mean, it's real brick and mortar type of businesses as well. It's businesses that say, for example, I wanted to go on to Biz, buy, sell or something like that one of the broker websites and I'm looking at acquiring an HVAC business, or I'm looking at acquiring a laundromat or one of these things that are cash-flowing businesses. People are like well, how doat or one of these things that are cash-flowing businesses? People are like well, how do I buy one of those? Those things are a million bucks or half a million. Well, you go to the SBA, right, and you try to get one of the SBA loans to help you acquire these businesses. Or you go to a local bank or whatever. But Alloy is one of those groups that can kind of help guide you in the right direction. If an SBA loan's not right for you or for whatever this is, they could point you in the right direction.

Speaker 1: 7:28

At least Most people have no clue that there's cash flow in businesses out there. You don't have to come up with something novel. There's businesses out here you can buy. There's guys retiring all the time that have client bases that have been around for 20 or 30 years. There's nobody that you know their kids don't want the business and they're just like, hey look, I'm making you know, netting 300 grand a year, putting it in my pocket. Why wouldn't you just want to buy a business that's already successful? So, but I will help you do stuff like that. It doesn't have to be some crazy AI tech startup, but if you are into AI tech startups, they, they can help you with that as well and connect you to the right people.

Speaker 2: 8:10

Maybe even connect co-founders yeah For co-founders and learning more about how to grow from an idea to how to validate that idea, how to get your first customer, how to scale if you need capital to scale faster. What's the approach there? How to you know approach investors, prepare a pitch deck. We come in there and help at each step of the way.

Speaker 1: 8:37

Yeah, yeah. So personally though, jeremy, I mean you're doing something that's not necessarily a high-tech startup. This is a textile business, which is kind of rare. For Cincinnati, I wouldn't say there's a bunch of textile businesses floating around here. I would think maybe like Asheville, north Carolina, or something like that. I mean, they do all that furniture in North Carolina, so I would assume there's pattern people there and folks that do upholstery and all that stuff. But for Cincinnati, I mean, this is very much a white collar advertising marketing type of city nowadays. So is it. Do you find it difficult to build the type of startup that you're building now, kind of something that could be online but also could be a brick and mortar but requires physical labor to make it happen?

Speaker 2: 9:28

Yeah, it's really interesting. The textile industry here actually dates back well over a hundred years. There was actually sweatshops in Cincinnati. At that time the garment industry here was thriving. There's a big textile building downtown and so, like other you know, midwest manufacturing hubs, over the last 50 years, everything has been outsourced or, you know, manufacturing now takes place overseas, and so a lot of the skilled labor that were that was doing um, those different industries, including textiles, you know no longer exists.

Speaker 2: 10:09

And so, you know, returning here after spending almost 10 years in India doing grassroots entrepreneurial, um you know, work with, with textile artisans and and cutting so many facturers with brands from around the world, connecting them to clients that cared about working directly with the maker, building those relationships, respecting the craft because these are traditional techniques. We work closely with the Cultural Intellectual Property Rights Initiative, which is taking measures to protect indigenous knowledge holders and their designs and techniques for creating different products, which was overlooked for, you know, since globalization, and you see mass fashion brands that are plagiarizing and appropriating those designs without any consequences. Finally, they're being held responsible. Wow, but with our business here there's not as much skilled artisans or labor that can do sewing machine operation, and so we started a brand about six months ago, a sewn in Cincy, and we've just partnered with Moreau sewing unlimited.

Speaker 2: 11:31

Ian Moreau is a master tailor. He's been in Cincinnati for 10 years. He's has a um, a tailoring and alterations uh, shop on mainstream. Where is he from originally? He's from the Island of Dominica, okay. The nature Island, the nature Island, okay. And where is that located? Um, it's, it's in the Caribbean. Oh, wow, okay.

Speaker 1: 11:50

Okay, so, and he's been in Cincinnati for 10 years. He's been doing this kind of work for 10 years, ever since he's been here.

Speaker 2: 11:56

He's, he comes from a long line of tailors and seamstresses. Okay, and so they did um garment manufacturing in the in in on Dominica, okay, and so he came here and wanted to, uh, you know, start a garment uh business. And you know the way he tells the story is that, you know, he thought there was going to be a lot of meat in the USA because that's what he saw when he came and visited with his father, uh, in the seventies. Oh, not anymore. And so, and so you know, his mission now is to reinvigorate this industry. And we met by chance and aligned and really grateful to have the opportunity to work with him, and our vision is to train the next generation of garment, of seamstresses and sewers, or sewists, depending on how you want to classify them, people that know how to do sewing. And so, right now, 97 percent of the clothing that we purchase is made outside the US. Oh, sure, eighty five percent of that clothing ends up in a landfill every year.

Speaker 1: 13:00

Yeah, they call it the dead white man's clothing in Western Africa, which is where most of that stuff goes. It comes giant bags of it, get delivered there and their markets where they pick through they'll put in a giant pile and they'll pick through all of these clothes from. Europe is one place that they go Right, and I forget which country in Africa they go to. It might be Ghana, but there's giant piles of clothes and people pick through all these clothes and if anything is worth keeping, they take it to a market and they sell it in these markets. I know that much. That's all I know about these clothes, but they do, they just get.

Speaker 2: 13:35

I mean, so much stuff gets wasted and hopefully reused and not just and the thing you know, the most startling statistic is that less than 2% of folks that are making the clothing earn a living wage.

Speaker 1: 13:48

Wow, and so in their country right.

Speaker 2: 13:58

So even in their country, yes, they're not making anything right, and and the fast fashion industry, as it's evolved over the last 30, 40 years, perpetuates this exploitive labor practice. Because the only way that they increase their bottom lines a lot of them are public companies is they have to sell more for cheaper. And how do you do that? Well, you make it in places that don't have any labor laws or lax labor laws, and you use the lowest quality products and you get people to buy as many as possible.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Well and I don't want to call any companies out, necessarily, but think things that you will go and buy just to wear to the club that night and then just throw away or like a button will break off of it or it's, it's, it's flimsy or whatever. That's essentially fast fashion, right yeah.

Speaker 2: 14:41

So our, again, our vision is that we get people interested in this again.

Speaker 2: 14:43

Again, our vision is that we get people interested in this again so at least they can repair that button at home instead of getting something new, or they can resize pants or a jacket, or restyle it, fix it.

Speaker 2: 14:59

We promote mending anything that is ripped or torn. So we have these intro classes every Saturday from 9 to 1030 at 1351 Main Street, and then the next progression is the beginner's course, which is six to 10 classes, and then the intermediate course, again six to 10 classes, and our goal is in the next year to be training enough folks that we can employ a first production group and so we'll start to manufacture clothing for the local market so that we can make in Cincinnati with, you know, upskilled, upskilled labor that is now getting, you know, these are new jobs created. And you know, over the course of five years, you know we can take that 97%, that is the rest of the US, and we'll bring that down to let you know. Over the course of five years, you know we can take that 97% that is the rest of the U? S, and we'll bring that down to, let's say, 80%.

Speaker 1: 15:54

Yeah, yeah, totally makes sense. So it's not just a company that you're like, hey, I want to make money at this. This is, hey, we're actually going to do something. There's going to be a net positive result for humanity if we do this and and just less waste. So I mean, that's that's. You know, I applaud you on that. Now there's a lot of people, I think, out there who are like, hey, look, everything seems technology, technology, technology. Right, that seems to be. You know, everybody's using the phone so much or using computers. I feel like there is a desire for Americans to get back to making things with their hands. Right, I feel like there's, there's a thing. It's like we got away from that for a while and it's not necessarily our fault. This is, you know, global agendas and things like that have led to this. But do you feel like, are you seeing that? I mean, you're in the industry and you're in this startup space, but you're also, you know, working in textiles?

Speaker 1: 16:49

of a global textile industry.

Speaker 2: 16:59

So so what are you seeing with people, especially Americans, or you know, do painting or um, people I think are aching to, to make, like to, to use their hands again the way that you know, we are evolved to, maybe you could say. Or how we use tools, how we use tools over you know what millions of years to to perfect how we are able to do things. I mean, you look at the great, you know, michelangelo. Look what he made with his hands. Yes, and so now we're making everything on the keyboard and the phone.

Speaker 1: 17:35

It's amazing. You look at some of the art back in the day and it's just like you know, you see the memes online and stuff. It's like we used to make things like this and now we make things like this and it's some weird modern contemporary art. But you know, you look at like a Michelangelo or some sculptures and things. It was just like so beautiful and like I just don't feel like people feel like they have the time to make beautiful things anymore.

Speaker 2: 17:55

I never liked that saying oh, I don't have time, you can always and that's the excuse here and people say that you know you can't actually times one thing. You never get back.

Speaker 1: 18:04

That's right.

Speaker 2: 18:05

But you can make time and you know, the time is yours to make.

Speaker 1: 18:10

Yeah, how much time do you spend flipping on Tik TOK every day? You know speak. You know mess around on social media. See how many likes you got. I mean, every American's doing it. Now you know it's not just you know, the younger generation. This is, this is pervasive in our culture right now and it is the. I think the opportunity is for the person who can step away from that and actually create. And is that? Do you feel like culture in general appreciates that?

Speaker 2: 18:38

I think there's a big shift. We were going 100 miles an hour, I think, towards the tech, and then the pandemic changed everything of how we think about our daily life and our value of our, you know, you could say freedoms, or you know normal daily life without you know lockdowns, or you know worrying about getting sick. Those things put more value on things that we had forgotten about, like the handmade industry or how things are made or where they're coming from the supply chain. You know whether you can, you know get a certain product quickly and so that it it. It was a shock to the human system. Um, that was a check, it was like a check, you know. But already we're starting to forget that check and we're going back, you know, hyper speed.

Speaker 1: 19:35

People are going back to the office. It's all that. Stuff's happening, yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:39

You know, and now the AI frontier, where you see the threat to a lot of jobs, and so there will be a pushback to the hand, I think, and using our hands to make things so that you know we don't have to worry about supply issues.

Speaker 1: 19:59

So, for the person who wants to do that right, who may not have the you know high tech startup and you know AI, and they're like, hey, we're, we're, we're utilizing VR, ar, uh, ai, you know, got all the buzzwords and all the new technologies. You know, those are the things investors a lot of times want to invest in, because they're like, oh, I can see a hundred X here, right, yeah, on my investment. Well, I just got a textile company, or I just got a. How do I find people that are willing to to get me out of my nine to five? Or or how do I start out? You know, do I just do a, do a Shopify site, or what?

Speaker 2: 20:35

So I would recommend searching a green umbrella.

Speaker 2: 20:40

Green umbrella Okay, all right, that's our local sustainability focus group, and a lot of times these activities fall under the sustainability umbrella, and so that is one place where you can learn about what people are doing in the ecosystem and beyond.

Speaker 2: 20:58

You know they have affiliate groups and organizations across America and if you, if you're looking for a switch or you want to see what's out there, like um, you know, for, for, at least for the sewing things, like we're, we're offering the free classes every Saturday, um, but you know, I, I would, I would urge people to get back to the earth and you know, drive an hour East of Cincinnati or any city that you're in, and try to get into a rural area, and that's where you'll find more of these roots of you know working with your hands and you know being more connected to a community, a closer knit community. I'm not saying that. You know cities don't have communities. There's lots of different communities, but in in the rural areas, usually it's like one community, and so that also is like a reset for for us, I think, and it's important to get back to nature, yeah um so or go camping or something.

Speaker 1: 22:00

I mean it's just like you don't have to go far outside of cincinnati, since that's a pretty big area. But I mean you go down to red river gorge, you can go to. I mean, you go down to Red River Gorge, you can go to Mammoth Cave.

Speaker 2: 22:07

You can go to Serpent Mound.

Speaker 1: 22:08

Serpent Mound, You've got Ohio. Eastern Ohio has a lot. Go to that Arc of Appalachia. Yeah yeah, there's tons of stuff. I mean, and we're not far from Appalachia. I mean it's part of Ohio, Half Ohio is Appalachia around here, but I'm sure, wherever you're at, if you're listening to the podcast, I mean I don't care if you're in Europe. I mean there's rural parts of France that you could go visit.

Speaker 1: 22:32

Usually an hour will get you somewhere yeah, that's rural, that they're growing things or they're making something. You know, my one of my favorite things is we went into, we were in Italy and we went, we made a burrata. So we were, you know, we got to see it made and we got to put our hands in it and it was, it was a cool thing, you know, it was like doing something. You know that I grew up in the city. I've been in the city my whole life. You know, I'm kind of scared of the woods. You know, I think there's weird things in the woods, you know, and it's and I feel comfort like I could be in the worst neighborhood in America and I'd probably feel more safe there than if I was in the woods somewhere. Right, but you know, if you have an idea, know that there are resources out there for you. There's places you can go. You mentioned the green umbrella.

Speaker 2: 23:18

Are there If you have an idea. Actually an idea can change the world, which is a pretty beautiful thing. If you think about it. One little idea can can have a butterfly effect that is affecting everybody. That's kind of what. Um, if you look at human history, you see these inflection points, you know, and so um, I mean we're doing that.

Speaker 1: 23:39

I did that, we. I mean that happened with the company we started. It's here at my coworking space. It happens all the time. I mean it's it's. It's happening right now, where we're on the podcast, we're talking and people are listening to this, right. So it's little things that could spread ideas, right, and that's the thing. Yeah, it's, it's, it's can. How do these ideas spread? How do we? How do we make money and do good at the same time? Possibly there's people out there that are attracted to that concept. The problem I always see with startup people is they've got a nine to five gig right. They're working somewhere First time, first time entrepreneurs.

Speaker 1: 24:14

Yeah, maybe first time entrepreneurs that didn't.

Speaker 2: 24:17

They didn't get the right the first time, and then they didn't ever made the jump again.

Speaker 1: 24:21

Yeah Well, I mean, I could do whatever now because I work for myself, you know. But you've got people that younger. They have that nine to five. Maybe they just bought a house, maybe they got a kid or two. They have responsibilities to their family. They want to get out of that nine to five world and they want to build something. They want to do something artisan. Right, you see it with Etsy people all the time. But there's so much competition on Etsy Most folks don't know how to build a Shopify store and drive traffic.

Speaker 1: 24:50

Right, I would say affiliates are a good way to do it right now. If there's anything, maybe start a YouTube channel, do those kinds of things. But you have to find time in your day to be able to do this work and you have to find ways to put it out there. There may not be investors for what your idea is. You may just have to do the work yourself. And you know, use whatever extra money you've got saved up. Try to find time at night on the weekends to to do these things and figure out a way to market your business somehow.

Speaker 2: 25:25

If you are interested in those. You know Etsy style, you know handmade um, artisan um businesses and and business models. Uh, I'd encourage also, you know these, these are traditional positions that folks do apprenticeships for and you know that whole apprenticeship kind of format has disappeared. Um, so, endeavor to like, find folks that are, you know, masters in that craft, and if it really means so much to you, then that's, you know that's kind of the approach. You should see how they do it and see if you can learn from them.

Speaker 1: 26:05

Network in your own community essentially yeah.

Speaker 1: 26:08

And your own, your own friends group, right? I mean there's or there's, there's, there's craft groups you can kind of get into and find that you could talk to those folks. Maybe you find somebody like you're talking about in one of those groups. But whatever it is you're doing and I think a lot of people too they want to start a t-shirt company or something real basic, right that they think that, oh, I'm going to do drop shipping or I'm going to do this thing that's going to make me a whole bunch of money and I'll have to put a whole bunch of time into it. Well then, the flip side of that business, that's one Etsy business, right. Then the flip side of that business is something that is actually a craft that takes time, that you can use your hands doing, that. You can build things on the weekends or at night or whatever, and everybody's got these really creative ideas.

Speaker 2: 26:59

Whenever I go on sites like that, I'm like, wow, that's that was, that's a good idea, that's cool that they did that.

Speaker 2: 27:04

Yeah Well, um, I agree, and it's what we're trying.

Speaker 2: 27:05

So there's, we're also trying to build a network of these makers across America and kind of categorize it by craft, the first one being textiles and garment making.

Speaker 2: 27:14

Textile crafts includes, you know, the, the raw material, from the spinning of the yarn to the weaving of the actual fabric, and then you know printing, whether it's block printing or screen printing, um, and then the garment making, or the product making, so making the clothing, or you know, bags, accessories, um and so, instead of going, you know, I see a future where, instead of going to the mall to buy something in the you know most sustainable future, um, you know, you're, you're, you've, you've got an app like DoorDash that you log in and you see some sort of clothing you like. You get to choose the fabric, you do a 360 spin to do a perfect fit, and then the central distribution laser cuts the fabric, sends it to the local sewer, that's on the network. They finish it and if they have a tailoring shop, the client can go in, get it, you know, fitted, and then they also have a point of contact in case they need it to be mended. Wow, that'd be wild. I'd use that.

Speaker 1: 28:22

Cloudsonecom. Cloudsonecom. Oh man, well, jeremy, this has been enlightening. If somebody wants to get a hold of your business, right, they want to learn more about what you're doing, or they want to get in touch with Alloy or just chat with you about handmade things and startups, how do they reach you? How do they find your company? How do they find Alloy? How do they find if you want to share your personal information?

Speaker 2: 28:48

Yeah, let's see you can go to FritzMFG. Yeah, um, let's see you can go to, uh, fritz M F Gcom.

Speaker 1: 28:59

Okay, Is it all on there? Is that like a? Does that get them everything you're doing?

Speaker 2: 29:03

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 29:03

Okay, what about like a LinkedIn or something?

Speaker 2: 29:05

Oh, linkedin, jeremy Fritz hand linkedincom forward. Slash in, slash, fritz hand.

Speaker 1: 29:11

F? R I T-I-T-Z-H-A-N-D. There you go, yep, and we'll put it in the show notes, guys. So if you're listening on a podcast, you know you go to our side, hustle dot money, or you just go into the podcast description and you will be able to find these links. Thanks for having me, I love it, jeremy?

Speaker 1: 29:31

Yeah, this is. We don't always get to talk about fabrics or handmade stuff on this show. We're usually talking about, you know, vending machines or real estate or something like that. So this is. It's exciting to have some diversity and some different industries in here. It's good to be here. Yeah, all right. Well, thank you, sir. Thank you. Thank you, thanks for joining us on this week's episode of Side Hustle City. Well, you've heard from our guests. Now let's hear from you. Join our community on Facebook, side Hustle City. It's a group where people share ideas, share their inspirational stories and motivate each other to be successful and turn their side hustle into their main hustle. We'll see you there and we'll see you next week on the show. Thank you.