029: Building a Sports Apparel Business to $15M/year. The Kent McKeaigg Story.

Background on Kent McKeaigg:

Kent McKeaigg is the Founder of OrderMyGear. He started the company so he could help his dad, Ronnie, sell gear to team parents. Ronnie sold sporting goods for over 35 years and felt the pain of collecting paper order forms, cash, and checks from parents. Kent decided to run an online store for his dad instead of dealing with paper, and the tool began spreading to dealers and reps around the country.

Our platform is uniquely tailored for the sporting goods and decorated apparel industries. We understand the complexities of selling to groups and we thrive on growing our customers’ businesses. Our customers consistently watch their businesses grow as the ease of our platform and services frees them up to focus on doing what they do best.

Time-Stamped Show Notes:

[1:22] OrderMyGear is an online platform that streamline the team sporting goods purchasing experience.
[1:32] Kent’s dad sold sporting goods.
[2:10] They build an application that allowed his dad to put all the goods online and the tool began to spread to dealers and reps.
[3:23] Kent has always been interested in entrepreneurship.
[3:35] He worked for a web company in Dallas.
[3:41] He read a lot of 37 Signals Books.
[5:23] The company is in Dallas, Texas, with 60 employees and have an expected revenue of about $15 million this year.
[5:45] In 2007, he started the company with a high school friend who’s a developer.
[6:03] They raise half a million in 2014 and grown since then.
[12:44] Kent work from home until 2010 before they rented a small office for $250 a month.
[17:24] “We didn’t really start off like a true start-up, so for us, every dollar we spent was trying to go back into growing the company.”
[18:22] One of the most helpful things he did for the company was to form an advisory board.
[25:16] Their incubator was REVTECH and they were the only one that was generating revenue out of 7 companies.
[27:42] “The first thing that’s helpful for us was that we had created something that somebody would pay for us for.”
[30:37] Reading Paul Graham’s “How to Raise Money” helped Kent during the capital raise time.
[30:48] “I could have done what he did (the CEO that they hired), I just didn’t know I could have done it. Exposure is very powerful.”

Fabulous 4 Questions:

📖 📚 Favorite Book(s)? Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by The Arbinger Institute
🙌😎 Favorite Amazon.com purchase? Prime Membership
🌱💸 Favorite Tool that's GROWN your Business? Looker.com
💭💡 BIGGEST Challenge keeping your Business from GROWING? Assessing the moving target of product market fit.