Billy Thompson, Founder of Thompson Tee / Sweatproof Undershirts

Thompson Tee  create sweat proof and premium undershirts that block 100% of underarm sweat and odour with patented Hydro-Shield sweatproof technology. Billy had axillary hyperhidrosis (excessive underarm sweating) and would practice ridiculous deodorant rituals to conceal his underarm sweat marks. In 2011, he approached friend Randy Choi, who had experience working in the apparel industry. Billy learned that he too, could relate to the struggles of excessive sweating. Randy, who suffered from cranial hyperhidrosis as a teen, underwent sweat gland removal surgery, only to end up with severe side effects which included all-over sweating, skin problems, slow metabolism and fatigue as a result. Bound by a shared passion to create a safe, affordable and convenient solution, they both developed a lightweight, breathable, comfortable and truly integrated underarm barrier that would completely absorb sweat, withstand the toughest stains, and help those living with axillary hyperhidrosis.

In this episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interview Billy Thompson, Founder of Thompson Tee about axillary hyperhidrosis and the founding story of his brand which has sold over million shirts in 10 years. Our host Peter Brooker and Billy talk about undershirt trends in the US vs UK, bootstrapping, production, Shark Tank, patented sweatproof technology, how to combat copycat businesses, and being featured on TV.

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Transcript

PB: 0:10

Welcome back to another episode of the menswear style podcast. I'm your host Pete Brooker. Today on the show we have Billy Thompson. He is the president and co founder of Thompson tea. That Thompson tea with HydroShield sweatproof technology is a patented undershirt guaranteed to block underarm sweat, as seen on Shark Tank and the doctors and it's been an editor's pick in Shape magazine, proudly serving over 250,000 customers in over 145 countries worldwide and handcrafted in the USA. And you can find more details over at Thompson t.com. That's th o n. P s o n t. T e.com. And you'll find all the show notes over at Menswear. style.co.uk But let me bring billion here. He'll introduce himself and tell us more about the brand Thompson T.

Unknown: 1:03

Yeah, sure. Hey, thanks for having me. By the way, I really appreciate that. And my name is Billy Thompson. I am the co founder and CO inventor of the Thompson T which is an undershirt that blocks underarm sweat. And I'm actually wearing one of them right now. So you can kind of see what it looks like there underneath my jacket here. And that's basically it. It's it's, you know, it's designed for people who either suffer from a condition called axillary hyperhidrosis, which is excessive underarm sweat beyond any physiological need. And then it's also for those people who sweat on a situational basis, whether it be you know, a meeting, a job interview, or, you know, they have a nice shirt that they want to protect those nice dress shirts, some of them are custom made can be very expensive, and they want to prevent those, you know, pit stains or antiperspirant stains, and we have customers buying our shirts for that reason as well. And we make it for both men and women.

PB: 1:57

Hey, that's a good point, actually. Because how do I say this about sounding highfalutin? I have my own dress shirts that I get made at my own shirt maker. This one I'm wearing is modelled on the one Roger Moore wore in euros only. Very, very, it's one of the only things that I'm very precious about. And so, having T shirts underneath shirts, dress shirts, or you know, smart shirts, is something that's of interest to me. And I was, I might be jumping ahead here. But do you think that there's a culture more for, say, the American market to wear T shirts underneath shirts than there is for say, the UK people have you come across?

Unknown: 2:37

You know what I mean? I unfortunately, I can't I can't speak to that particular, you know, culture in the UK, I do know is very prevalent here in the United States. A lot of a lot of guys will be wearing, you know, and definitely more so guys than girls. There'll be wearing undershirts underneath a lot of their other stuff, whether it be for, you know, a little bit of the colour to show or for the caller not the show, for those very reasons. I guess, Pete, I could ask you, do you? I mean, are the guys out there wearing undershirts? Are you wearing an undershirt right now?

PB: 3:10

Well, I'm actually not wearing an undershirt now, because I've got a mod in the wash, believe it or not. But I generally do wear an undershirt if my if I'm wearing a nice shirt. If I'm just wearing my kind of, I guess disposable shirts. Yes, that phrase then I'm not too precious about it. But I mean, like my girlfriend, for example, brought this up. And she's she's been saying this for years, because she's spent a lot of time in America. She says Americans would wear an undershirt, much like you'd wear pants underneath trousers, or sorry, boxer shorts briefs underneath trousers in the UK, it's it's not something that is so prevalent, which is bananas, because we have the code or whatever. You'd think it would be over here.

Unknown: 3:56

Yeah, exactly. And that's interesting. I appreciate that insight. I do know, the UK is one of our larger international territories. You know, we've seen a lot of success there. We've seen a lot of success out of Germany. So it's definitely a market that that we can appreciate. Sure.

PB: 4:14

Well, perhaps you can tell me I mean, the brand is around 10 years old. Is that right?

Unknown: 4:19

Yeah, it is. We celebrated our 10 year anniversary this year. Having, you know, obviously, having made it through COVID, like a lot of other people, right, and shared a lot of similar struggles with that, right. I mean, it was, it was quite the experience. But you know, it's been, you know, you come out of something like that, and you almost feel like, well, we can make it through that. Then, you know, how much more stronger Are we now as a company and as individuals that, you know, we could we can look to, you know, much, much more brighter days ahead of us.

PB: 4:52

Yeah. And how did you get the brand off the ground in terms of capitals is something that you personally invest To denote Did you see funding?

Unknown: 5:02

You know what, it was definitely a very bootstrapped endeavour. And I had started on this project. Several months before I brought in my my business partner and co founder, his name is Randy Choi. And essentially, what we did was we put in 10 grand a piece, so really was only, you know,$20,000. And we managed to take that 20,000. And, you know, obviously, we weren't taking any pay, we rolled that back into the company over and over again. And for the first two years, I mean, there was no pay being, you know, distributed from the company. And we, again, a true and tried bootstrap strategy. But for me, personally, that$10,000 was a mix of cash. And, you know, I relied very heavily on credit cards, and more. So for my personal personal expenses. You know, I had, I had just had a baby at the time. And so it was, it was a very stressful time. And so I had to utilise my credit cards to give my you know, to cover my personal expenses to the, to the largest degree that I could possible, and I racked up, you know, over $100,000 in credit card debt. I think one of the one of the credit card companies did a did a story not too long ago, where they profiled that, you know, that $100,000 in debt that I've that I've racked up and was luckily, you know, able to pay back and, and do time. But that is really how we started in, you know, we did initially look for some startup capital, of course, right, we wanted to, you know, hyper growth. And, you know, at the time, a lot of the capital came with a contingency that we would move our production offshore, which is very typical for clothing. And we were we were manufacturing here in the United States, my business partner has a domestic supply chain network that he's been utilising for, oh, my goodness, now, we're probably approaching 30 years now. It was it was 20 years back when we started. So it's 30 years now. And we felt adamant about not wanting to move our production overseas. So in those very early days, we we declined those offers. And we actually had a small crowdfunding campaign that we launched on Indiegogo as well. But that's basically it from a from a startup capital perspective. And, Pete, I'm not sure. And this is jumping ahead many years, but I'm not sure if you knew this or not, but we were on the show. Shark Tank. Right.

PB: 7:17

Okay. No, I didn't know that. So that's the Dragon's Den equivalent over here. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. How did that go? Oh, well, I'm in trade. Yeah.

Unknown: 7:25

And we were on Season Eight, Episode 23. And we had a pretty large ask, we were asking for $700,000 for 10%. Of I'm sorry, 7% of our company, we ended up agreeing to 700,000 for 25% of our company with Robert. And ultimately, that deal did not come to fruition, I think it was primarily more so on my business partner wise decision to do that. Unfortunate, I can't get into too much of the details as to why. But it was a decision that we had made collectively, but it was, you know, it was a great experience from start to finish. And obviously a major major win for our business. We just had a shark tank reunion. Here in Vegas, luckily, the, you know, the convention mecca of the United States, and got to see people from all the way from season one all the way up. And so it was it was it was really cool. There's kind of a fraternal feeling to you know, having been on the show, we all went through the same thing.

PB: 8:21

Hey, um, so a question about Shark Tank. I think I don't know if people watch Shark Tank and Dragon's Den and really get the idea that when you're doing the pitch, and then there's an agreement made with one of the dragons, or I guess one of the sharks, that's all kind of like a that's like, say 50% of it, right? That's the handshake for the cameras. And then you got to go away and have a look at the fine print draw. And I guess that is where everything can kind of fall down for for both parties.

Unknown: 8:49

Yeah, exactly. I mean, it is it is what you see on TV, we you know, you the sharks, they have no idea who's coming up. And it is it is the first time we're meeting them and you pitch them and you do a handshake deal. And like you said, and then and then shortly thereafter, the due diligence process starts and you start going down the path of okay, well, this is, you know, that a lot of people it's funny, a lot of people think, oh my gosh, you you know you walk backstage and Robert cut you a check for 700 grand, it's quite work that way. But

PB: 9:18

But yeah, that'd be brilliant. And there's and there's a big,

Unknown: 9:21

you know, there's a big statistics are out there. So I'm not disclosing anything that other people haven't cited already. But, you know, I think it's upwards of, you know, 70 to 80% of the deals that you see on TV, actually don't, you know, get get inked or get finalised? You know, behind the scenes.

PB: 9:37

Right. Okay. Well, that's fascinating. But yeah, I think people just assume it's, but they're writing out checks on their desk. Or on the table is like real? Like, yeah,

Unknown: 9:47

yeah. What is a silver briefcase with 700 grand in cash that we that we walk out of the studio

PB: 9:52

with? Thanks. Well, we're off to Vegas now because we can just pump all that down in here. Exactly. Well, thanks for getting back to the team. So I want to talk about some of the patented technology such as the HydroShield, that it's all on the website. And the website, by the way, is fantastic. It's really, really easy to navigate around. Oh, thank you. And it's, it's kind of really well structured. And I say this every now and again, to some guests that come on the show. But the ones that have really got a good website, they get it, you know, it goes where your head wants to go, if you know, I mean, when you click on something, and you're not sent down a rabbit hole, or a wormhole that you can't get back from, but the blogs and all of the like the sweat of 101 tabs and and all the frequently asked questions. It's so comprehensive, basically, if you want to know anything regarding the science of perspiring and you know, and what's involved with the T's here, then this is the place to go. But my question, my long question, very verbose questions,

Unknown: 10:57

that's okay. And, and Pete, if I, if I could interject really quickly, just and say, express my gratitude and say thank you for that, because there is a lot of time and effort that goes into, you know, the CRO, and the user interface. And the company that we've been working with, essentially, from the beginning, is a company called human marketing, and they handle all of our digital marketing and much of our tech support on the website, they're the ones that are responsible for those user interfaces, and the A B testing and, and the, you know, the SEO and all of that stuff. And so, the founder of that company, you know, he actually had the issue of excessive underarm sweat. So that's how he found our product, he became very passionate about it, and originally had wanted to come work, work with us and work for us. And you know, unfortunately, we could at that time, that was very early on. And we're, you know, my business partner, I didn't even know how to instal Google Analytics on our website. We weren't even paying ourselves. So there's no way we could afford, you know, a high level digital marketing individual like him. And so then he, you know, we kind of encouraged him, and he was thinking about branching off and starting his own company. So he did, he did exactly that. And they found a lot of success. So we've kind of grown our companies together. And, you know, obviously, we're bound by this passion for, you know, having a safe and convenient, affordable solution to this to this problem that plagues you know, literally 10s of millions of people across the world.

PB: 12:24

Yeah, and it's an you really get a vibe for that. Because it's not just like a hit and run website where you buy a t shirt that might plug or fix a problem for someone really quick. It's something that's gotten really into the weeds. Like, there's so many different articles and research done, like say, for example, that the deodorant alternatives and natural deodorants and stuff like that, and, and soaps, but you know, I'm just scratching that, especially the tip of the iceberg here. But the

Unknown: 12:51

Yeah, well, they will, you know, again, thank you for that, Pete. And I'll be sure to, I'm sure they're gonna see this, this podcast, and I'll relay the message to them, because those folks put a lot of hard work into that. So that's, that's, you know, it's great to hear that.

PB: 13:04

Yeah, it's paid off. I mean, they, what was the journey like, though developing the technology, because you've got some of the patent technology going on, such as the hydro show? Maybe you can talk about that a little bit? Right. Yeah.

Unknown: 13:15

You know, that was the missing ingredient. That was the secret sauce, right? I mean, this was a condition that I started dealing with in junior high. And you know, of course, I will never forget the day that I first saw this happen. I was wearing this blue t shirt and you saw the you know, the sweat mark, it was early in the in the school day. And I thought, Oh, my goodness, what is this, and then from that day forward, it was wearing, you know, under shirts, even under T shirts, right now, luckily for me, back then baggy clothes were in. I mean, I graduated high school in 1996. I'm 45 years old now. And so back then very baggy clothes were sort of in style. So layering was in style as well. So that allowed me to conceal this issue. For the most part, right? There wasn't this very tight, skinny jeans, skinny fit movement back then. And thank goodness, because it would have been very difficult for me. But through that experience, I knew that if there was somehow that this undershirt could just block the moisture from passing through the outer garment that we'd have something here and I grew, I grew up in a very small town and Pennsylvania on the east coast of the United States. And just in my small group of friends, there was two to three individuals that sort of had the same issue. And so we would be talking about ways, you know, the new antiperspirants that were coming out and ways that we could combat and, and figure out a solution to this. And so that's when I sort of realised like, wow, if it's just in my small group, there's this many fellows that have this issue, then this must, you know, this must expand across the population accordingly, and I knew if we could just come up with this product, that would be great. The challenge though, however, is you know, you can't you know, I have four attributes I want it to be, you know, washable. drivable comfortable and essentially waterproof, right? But you can't just slap a waterproof material against your skin, it'd be like sitting on a, you know, a leather chair or a leather couch without your shirt on, it could actually exacerbate the problem, right. And so finding that material that wouldn't allow the moisture to pass through was literally half the problem that you could wash and dry. I didn't want any special treatments, I didn't want any chemical treatments, I wanted to an undershirt that guys could just treat like they do their normal undershirts, put it on, take it off, wash it, dry it, and there's no change in the process. The only thing is we you know, we don't recommend you using bleach on the product. But other than that is no different than a regular undershirt. And so in that challenge, finding something that was a, you know, a moisture barrier that can handle that, and then also to making it comfortable for the wearer. And we achieved that by using a layering system in there and a stitching system that would sort of below when you move your arms, right, so right now, I mean, I'm obviously probably most likely pitting out. And as I move my arms, I could feel the cool air being sucked in. And I can feel that and that helps mitigate some of that thermal, you know, the heat transfer from your body. And so something that that is, you know, so rudimentary, or just just, it's just a patch in your underarm, you know, there was a lot of thought that went into how to make this the most effective while also maintaining the, you know, the wearability the comfort of it, and then obviously, the convenience of it of, you know, just being able to wash it and dry it and treat it like you would a normal undershirt. So that really are all the components that go into our pattern. And of course, we have a bunch of knockoffs out there, right there that's inevitable, and a bunch of people who just blatantly copied our stuff, I think it's safe, it's very safe to say that we are by far the market leader in our space. And so we sort of set the, you know, we set the standard, which everyone else seems to be following right now.

PB: 17:04

And what can you do about that when you see someone else, roughing your designs or blatantly lifting them?

Unknown: 17:11

You know, it's so aggravating, right? You pour your you know, your poor, your, literally your blood, sweat and tears into something and you take all of the risks, and you do these things. And what we learned very early on in the process is that, you know, the legal process can be very long, it can be very expensive, we have been able to shut down a few folks that popped up. And so you know, you have to make that decision, do we want to spend our time resources and energy into fighting these legal battles that could get, you know, drawn out over the course of months and even years? Or do we just want to continue to put that time and energy into creating the best product backed by the best service and I think that's one of the things that differentiates us is we're I think we're one of the only ones that have a live, you know, Customer Service Support Centre, we have the we have the most the most liberal return policy, right? It's there the you know, a lot of garments you have to wear, the tags have to be ours like you to wear it for 30 days straight, you can wash it, you could dry it, you could do whatever you want, because we and if at the end of the 30 days, you don't like it, we'll take it back, simply because we just we don't want anyone to have our product that doesn't want it. And, sure, test it out. That's how confident we are in the product that you can battle tested. Nobody else offers that. But to answer your question, you know, it's the old adage, pick your battles, that's essentially what it is we do have to pick our battles and be sort of diplomatic in who we want to go after. And, you know, if we're, if we're ready for that fight, or do we just want to continue pouring our time and energy into our product or service, you know, our marketing our advertising, and just continue to dominate from that perspective. And I think the consumer, you know, you put that messaging out there, and there's enough of that branding that's been out there. I mean, we've we've been very fortunate that we've, you know, we've had a lot of sort of free product placement in, you know, there's a couple TV shows that have put our product in there. And that and that stuff is very expensive, but we didn't have to pay for that. It was they just fit the storyline. So that means, you know, the branding is working. Right? That means that, you know, we've we've carved out this niche, and we've so that's the answer. You know, the long answer to your question from that legal standpoint, you know, your patent is only as good as the money essentially, you have to defend it. And you know, in the energy that you're willing to put behind it, right. And so, right now, we still feel like nobody is is close enough to us, that we would have to resort to that measure. And we're still finding a lot of success and continuing to just focus on our product and our brand.

PB: 19:47

I got to ask what TV shows if you mentioned there,

Unknown: 19:50

you know, it was there was a oh my goodness, I can't even believe I forgot I forget his name. He's been he's been an actor for a very long time. He was in a lot a lot of stuff. But he's the spokesperson for the farmers insurance commercials that are happening out here. And he was in a show that was on one of the more premium channels. And it. Unfortunately, it only I think it only lasted like two seasons. But he had mentioned it in the storyline. It was funny because I woke up that morning and I started getting messages like, oh my gosh, I saw you on your TV, your T got mentioned on the show the other night like congratulations. And this I thought, come on, they must be mistaking, right? Because very few of these shows are going to give you that kind of publicity without actually having to pay something. And I thought, Oh, that can't be us. And then we finally scrambled that that morning and tried to find a clip of what they were talking about. And we did find it and it was it was pretty cool for them to mention our brand and work into the storyline. And then the other show, which it was sort of an indirect mention, it was a reality TV show called Jersey Shore. Oh, yes. And one of the one of the one of the fellows on there was actually ironing that shirt. And they had mentioned about going out that night to the club. And how, you know, his confidence was was higher, because he had this, you know, this special undershirt? Yeah, it was very cool. It was very cool. So we, you know, we have that along with a tonne of press that, you know, we've gotten throughout the years that quite simply the Mi two products, you know, they can't do, right. They don't have the story. Right. They you know, they're they they're just a knockout. They're just knock offs, right? They don't have that, that story that that that sincerity that went behind their products to the degree that we do.

PB: 21:41

And also, it must be quite cool when the press is good. I mean, so you wake up in the morning and some guys, you've been on a TV show you scrambled to it. And it's good news, right? Yeah, I keep I keep thinking back to what I just watched tennis the other night again. Oh, Michael Caine goes on about how bad Brooks Brothers is his someone's gonna have a word with a guy Brooks Brothers and your name was intended Michael Caine was talking about Brooks Brothers, and they're gonna get to it and go, Oh, yeah. Your suits not we're gonna cut it in this place. Because? Yeah, but it wasn't. It wasn't even a Brooks Brothers suit. It was made by the customers on it. Oh, yeah. There's must be like a flipside. Where you go? Oh, great. I'm on TV. What great press, you know. And then you realise always someone's having a poke at your company. Yeah,

Unknown: 22:26

exactly. Right. So I don't know if the old adage, there's an old saying here that there's no bad press. But I think I think that was probably pre social media days, where, you know, this bad press can be spread at a granular level, to you know, 10s of millions of people around the world.

PB: 22:47

It's the same as imitation is the best form of flattery. But I think the people that made that up, didn't have a pattern that was getting ripped off. Right. And so yeah,

Unknown: 22:55

exactly. Now, you know, mind you, we did we did we did, we did get some validation there, when we were like, Well, hey, you know, if they're knocking a soft, and that means that we must be doing something right here. But you're right. It's very short lived and very shallow. It's like, you know, what, I would much rather these people not be there. But in that true competitive spirit, I must say that, you know, they, because they're there, right? We're aware of all of them. We see what they're doing. It does provide some motivation for us. And it does make us want to be better, because we know we have these competitors out there. And we just want to continuously stay ahead. So I guess if there is a silver lining to that, you know, there it is. Yeah.

PB: 23:36

Billy, I feel like I could talk to you for ages. This is one of my favourite subjects. But appreciate you've got a day to get on with, it's only just getting going over there for you. And what's next for the brand, please?

Unknown: 23:47

You know, what? After coming through, you know, COVID and going through that, that that whole process, the you know, the runway of our for set, foresight got very shortened, right, because it was like survival mode, where, you know, we're not looking three years from now, we're not looking two years from now we're looking from, you know, every month we're looking at, hey, what are we doing what's happening, what's coming at us now, we are now coming out of that phase, which is great, right? We had, obviously 2020 was a very challenging year. And then, you know, going into 2021, we thought things were going to get better. And they actually, in many ways got worse because of the supply chain issues that many companies are experiencing. And we're no different. And so we were operating at about 60% of our production capacity for the for the all of basically 2021 And for a big chunk of 2022. So up until about maybe three months ago, is when we finally got caught up with our inventory. And we started running our promotions again, because we're a direct to consumer company. So when we send out an email promotion, it drives, you know, millions of dollars in revenue for the company. We couldn't do that for the entire year because we had to stretch chatter inventory, we had to be able to make that inventory last, right, your classic supply and demand economics. And so now that we're finally past that, you know, we're finally past the production issues. And you know, big shout out to my business partner who handles that piece of the supply chain. And our VP of Operations, the two of them worked very diligently, very hard over the last year and a half and to get us to where we're at now. But we there were a couple projects that we were looking at back in 2019, prior to COVID, that we had to shelve, you know, we may get into the, into the outerwear. So really, it's, you know, it's product development, and then distribution. Right, we're DTC. So we're looking at always, how do we expand our, our digital footprints, our DTC distribution channels is brick and mortar, something that we want to look at, we may entertain that idea as well. Because of the inventory depletion, places like you know, our international channels that we sell through Amazon, which by the way, we can ask you a quick question, do you use the Amazon in the UK? Yeah, yep. Okay, beautiful, because that has been a strategy that we've utilised with them, it makes, it makes it much easier for us to go ahead and scale up by using the Amazon platforms. And they were driving, you know, a very good amount of sales in the UK market. But obviously, when you run out of product, and you don't have product to ship internationally, your ability to sort of ask Amazon, hey, we can't just you know, you can't just send them a trailer load of products. They're going to look at what your sales are. And unfortunately, our sales were hindered by the fact that we had a lack of product, not necessarily demand. So we're slowly building that back up. And we're building our all of our inner international channels back, we're shipping product out as much as as much as we were allowed to by Amazon. And it's moving, which is great. So to answer your question, we are obviously product developments always on the forefront and then distribution, right? How do we get this to the people that that need it the most?

PB: 26:58

Awesome. Well, I look forward to seeing you in bricks and mortar hopefully in the UK. If you need any help with that pop up stores or unique little selling spaces boutiques. Give me a call. Please. Billy. In the meantime, come on, check out. Thompson t.com. that's T H O N P Sun t.com is the website people can go if they're not going to look on Amazon, which they can do as well. We'll put all the links over on the show notes. So there's people can find you guys and you'd like to hang out on Instagram. Thompson tees? Yeah.

Unknown: 27:31

They're there. Yeah, we have we have an Instagram page. And a lot of customer Generated Content sometimes goes on there too, where we'll post, you know, folks will put their pictures up. And, you know, Pete, I think you guys are doing a great thing driving the mens style and the fashion and doing these podcasts. I think that's very awesome. I mean, I really do believe that Thompson T is a is a crucial piece of anybody's wardrobe, you know, you should have probably have at least one. If you don't necessarily have the condition. There's always going to be a moment a high pressure situation that, hey, it's this failproof

PB: 28:04

Oh, you're telling me about I mean, I've got some events coming up. I'm gonna this is something I've been crying out for Billy. So I'll batch and then give me some feedback. I appreciate that. In the meantime, great talking to you, Billy, and enjoy the rest of your

Unknown: 28:17

day. Hey, likewise. Thank you, Pete.

PB: 28:25

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