As Founder and CEO of WORN, Bryan Marville is the inventor and strategist driving the brand’s sustainability mission. Bryan is passionate about why we need to end our commodity relationship with both socks and fast fashion.
WORN was founded by Bryan in 2019 with the goal of creating longer-lasting, higher-performing socks using the lowest-impact materials possible. An avid surfer, Bryan created a FrictionlessTM sock product in 2015 to make getting in and out of wetsuits easier. This launched a three-year journey of testing and researching technical fabrics and designs for feature-driven socks. It wasn’t until his discovery and development of ArrowoolTM — the patent-pending, technically-enhanced Merino wool — that WORN was officially born.
In this episode you’ll learn about:
- How Bryan went from working in advertising and brand marketing to creating a product and learning the other side of the business.
- The negative impact of cotton and other textile commodities on the environment.
- Why investing in higher-priced, better-quality products not only creates value for the consumer but also tremendously reduces the environmental impact.
- How a brand can relate to the eco-conscious consumer.
- How the new metrics of performance should combine both performance and sustainability.
- How not knowing everything can be an advantage.
- How offering returns and guarantees can dissolve barriers between consumer and company.
- Why a business should focus on building strength before growth.
- User-generated content, sales funnels, and how to rate your success.
Resources:
Connecting with Bryan Marville:
Connecting with the host:
- Rebecca Babicz on LinkedIn
Quotables
- 2:55 “I was so impressed with these people and the effort they put into their product and their development, and how little time they were spending on the other side of their business, and how much they felt that the product was driving their brand and their occasion.”
- 3:07 “So I thought I would give it a shot, to make a product and see if I could do it myself.”
- 4:41 “I had the distinct advantage of not having any idea what I was doing. Because of that, I did not run into the mental block of it can’t really be done this way, or shouldn’t be done this way, or here’s all the reasons you shouldn’t do something this way.”
- 5:12 “If you’re not solving a problem for your consumer, you’re not solving a problem for your company.”
- 21:14 “If you focus on getting strong first, you’ll be able to get big later. If you focus on getting big first, you’re going to be weak and large.”
- 25:36 “Another way to go is organic development. We have started producing a series of organic content and letting it become a slow burn. Quick hit, interesting things, relatable to the audience.”