THURSDAY BOOTS, CONNOR WILSON: Successfully Bootstrapped
Boots, not the UK pharmacy, but the fashion accessory you wear on a daily basis. They come in all shapes and colors, but the relationship between quality and price tend to be disproportionate. In hopes to fill a gap in the market based on a personal problem, Connor Wilson reimagines the working boot at an affordable price with unbeatable quality. Welcome, Thursday Boots.
Jessica Simpson had it right when she said “these boots were made for walking”, and walking is not all they shall do. Connor Wilson, co-founder of Thursday Boots was of a similar mindset when he moved to New York to reimagine the working boot with a fashion twist. “When I got to NYC, I was wearing a pair of cowboy boots and decided it was a good idea to get some regular lace-up bottom boots for winter since I didn’t really fit in with my look. I bought a random pair of boots and within 2 months they were wrecked. The leather looked terrible and I had to throw them away. I was very disappointed. I never went back for another pair because they were expensive and the list goes on as my customer problems”, says Connor.
Thursday Boots is a high-quality footwear brand that combines aesthetics and function at an affordable pricepoint. They cater to both men and women and was originally built for the streets of New York City. Connor tells us how he went to Columbia University for grad school to get his MBA in hopes of launching a business before graduation.
Co-founders, Nolan Walsh (on left) and Connor Wilson (on right).
On Finding a Co-Founder
“ I met my co-founder, Nolan Walsh on the first day of class at grad school. This was back in 2013. We both raised our hands when the professor asked who wants to become an entrepreneur and there were only four of us in total, so we all went out for coffee afterward.”
At the time, Connor was working with a startup that ended up getting acquired by Walmart. “Nolan and I entered business school wanting to leave with a business. That focus helped a lot. We wanted to build a business that really mattered, do something that was authentic to who we were, and provide us with the flexibility to make decisions. We went on vacation together to Nicaragua and discussed our alignments on goals and values. By the end of the vacation, Nolan was at a bar and complemented some guy who was wearing boots, who had mentioned he gets them made from a small village in Central America. That led us to think omg, we can build our own boots!”
Jumping to May 2014, and Thursday Boots steps into the footwear market via Kickstarter. Connor was still in business school at the time. “I was getting four hours of sleep a night. I would wake up, answer emails, fall back asleep, and do it all over again. Our first hire was for customer service. People just came to us which is how we grew our early team.”
“We are insane about getting data.”
When it comes to Thursday Boots marketing, Connor and his team are obsessed with data, data, data! This is what allows product brands to scale and garner venture capital funding. “We try to find as many data points as possible. We read all pieces of feedback whether it is coming from social media, emails, etc because it all allows us to make improvements”, says Connor.
Thursday Boots has experimented with many marketing channels and likes to get a laugh from the public every once in a while because sometimes you should do things that are fun and engaging. “For April Fools day we did an invisible boot one year, which we made available for sale. It was a campaign, but there was no actual boot created.”
However, word of mouth marketing has been their main source of revenue. “We launched on Kickstarter ourselves and treated our first customers as kings. We had 3 models, 3 colorways, and viewed the product quality as our marketing spend, and wanted the first couple of hundred customers to love them!” For those wondering, Thursday Boots was as you might assume, bootstrapped. The founders put in a total of $20,000 and did everything themselves.
“The reason why we wanted to start our own business was to grow as business people. So, when it came to branding, product design, marketing, hiring, website design, and customer service, we worked all of those jobs and have done it all so that we can bring an amateur view to those spaces. This has been very helpful to approach problem-solving differently.”
“We want to bring quality back to footwear.”
Connor faced a lot of challenges in the early days. Some of them include finding the right suppliers. “We knocked on a lot of doors. If you work with the best suppliers they help you find other amazing suppliers and the cycle continues. We are also very big on tight time cycles in production. We run small batches and have spent a lot of time with our factories to create a responsive system.” They focus on finding the highest quality suppliers - one of their biggest tanneries, US-based Horween, is so environmentally responsible that their filtration systems end up pumping out cleaner water than they take in from the City of Chicago.
Scaling has also been another challenge. “You have to reinvent yourself and the organization because the things you were doing 6 months ago need to change (org chart, processes, roles). There comes a point in time where you need to trust people to do things and learn from their mistakes versus you telling them what to do.”
The Childhood
Hailing from Lone Tree, Colorado, Connor is a CFA charter holder and in his previous career, he was a public equity investor at Thornburg Investment Management. He grew up attending Highlands Ranch high school and was on the varsity track team. “I was always putting in the work, and was extremely curious.” His first job was at the age of 14 when he worked at an ice cream shop, followed by being a waiter at a restaurant at the age of 16. He attended Harvard for undergrad and majored in Government as he was always interested in how the world fits together. Fun fact: he has been wearing cowboy boots since the age of 6 and originally sold shoes on the internet with his buddy back in undergrad in 2004.
The Advice
The culture at Thursday Boots can be best described as data-driven, humble, hard-working, and self-criticizing. As a founder with a rigorous understanding of how things work, Connor provides us with his feedback for those looking to launch a product based company:
You have to lead by doing to create a culture and by the time you start talking about those things, the culture is already set.
When it comes to the early days of feedback, use your gut to find what you are looking for.
Get critical feedback from friends and family and lean into the things you need to get better at.
Money is a means of financing the mission and the mission is to serve the customers. You need to find out what you are doing that is going to add enough value to a customer’s life.
How do you provide value? This should be the question you are always answering.
Available in over 50 states and 60 countries, Thursday Boots can be purchased here.
Photo courtesy of Thursday Boots.
Written by Alysha Malik.