Exray is alive.
In the short term, it's taken hours of paperwork, lots of advice (paid and unpaid, solicited and unsolicited...) from lawyers, accountants, friends, and family, a few Shopify, Adobe, and Excel refreshers, some serious trust from our spouses, and, of course, a City of Vista home occupancy and wastewater usage report.
In the long term, it's taken a combined 25 years of experience in apparel manufacturing between the two of us, and another 12 years of service in the Marine Corps before that. It's taken countless dismount patrols around Helmand Province, cold nights on Cape Wrath, hot days in 29 Palms and Yuma and the Chocolate Mountains, and a few too many cardboard-feeling box-shaped shirts in various shades of OD Green hanging around the closet. It started in the industry at $11/hr putting slings and nylon pouches into cardboard boxes, and it morphed into so much more...into a career...into a life. Separately, Brennan and I have led sales teams and operations teams and warehouses and factories, invented systems and processes, and then reinvented them when what we created was shitty or insufficient, and we've taken our licks and lessons in an often unforgiving industry, where the expectation is delivery now or yesterday. It's all led to here...to Exray.
Here's the plan.
We'll build our brand on strong relationships and partnerships. Partnerships with units, departments, associations, charities, gyms, businesses, and anyone else who will help us put Service on a pedestal. We're more than fabric and ink hanging in a closet - we're performance with a purpose.
We'll produce elevated performance apparel here in America, and we'll partner with other Veteran-led businesses to produce the things we don't; cotton casual apparel, patches, and the other things the community wants. We'll offer flexible and free custom design, so our customers can highlight and promote their membership and camaraderie with a group they're proud to be a part of - a group they most likely had to work hard to join and serve with. Then, we'll reduce the burden of ordering and delivering outstanding products by hosting custom e-commerce stores for our partners and shipping orders direct to their followers' homes. Our customers have more important things to focus on than ordering shirts - we're going to give them a great result at a fraction of the time and cost so they can go change the world, and look great while they're at it.
We have so much more to do, and until we get bigger, well be doing it from a cramped home office or a Carlsbad City Library study room (on the days my wife kicks us out of our "HQ") - we're running lean and we wouldn't have it any other way. Finally, we'll make transparency a key part of our process and share this journey with you, if you'll join us. I hope you do.
Exray is alive, now it's time to start working.
Mike & Brennan