Menswear Style Podcast

Kasper Brandi Petersen, Co-Founder of LABFRESH / Minimal Menswear

May 25, 2020 Menswear Style Episode 61
Menswear Style Podcast
Kasper Brandi Petersen, Co-Founder of LABFRESH / Minimal Menswear
Show Notes Transcript

In 2013 Kasper Brandi Petersen quit his corporate job at the world’s largest shipping line. He went from wearing a suit and tie to sitting on cardboard boxes in an old apartment. 3 years later he had raised €3m from investors and scaled to 50 people. Today he fights fast fashion by using technology to make a new generation of life-proof minimal menswear consisting of premium cotton shirts that repel stains, odour, and wrinkles. The brand first launched on Kickstarter in 2017 and by 2020 it had customers across 98 countries.

Lotte Vink and Kasper Petersen are the Co-Founders of LABFRESH. In contrary to most fashion houses, they want you to buy less and wear their products longer. They apply exclusive FreshCore technology to premium cotton fabrics. After their brand became the most backed European apparel project in crowdfunding history, they quit their jobs, found an office in Amsterdam, and started building a business from scratch. Over the past 2 years they've built a supply chain, a website and a brand which has seen press coverage across TV, radio and leading magazines. They were finalists in the start-up competition Get in the Ring and the Accenture Innovation Awards, and they won €1000 from Awesome Amsterdam, which they used to make anti-bacterial socks for the homeless. 

In this episode of the MenswearStyle Podcast we interview LABFRESH Co-Founder, Kasper Brandi Petersen, about his background in fashion and how he launched this brand on Kickstarter. Our host Peter Brooker and Kasper talk about how the brand went viral due to its key feature of repelling stains, where websites such as LADbible would show their videos with red wine, beer and milk being thrown onto the shirts. The discussion goes into detail about the fabric technology and manufacturing processes to create repellent clothing. They also chat about their successful Dragon's Den appearances, the effects of Covid-19 on business and how this year he took the whole team to Bali for a month.

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of The menswear style podcast. I'm your host Pete broca and on this episode I'm going to be speaking to Casper brandy Peterson. Casper is the creator of companies and clothing lab fresh is what we'll be talking about today to lab pressure you might have seen these guys already on the thumbnails of Bloomberg and YouTube people for and why and it garments and it just bouncing off like bullets on Batman suit. So lab fresh. Let me read off the little blurb here. Lab fresh bite fast fashion by using technology to make a new generation of life proof menswear, premium cotton shirts that repel stains and odour by less, wash less, wear more. Okay, so we'll get into that interview shortly. In the meantime, make sure you're heading over to menswear. style.co. UK that's where we'll put all the show notes from this interview. Plus links to articles on fashion obviously, travel not so much anymore. competitions etc. That's all over at men's wear style. Make sure you're following us on the social that way. We'll keep you updated when we post new articles, new podcast episodes whatnot, menswear stylist, type that into your smartphone will come up. Lastly, if you want to get in touch with the show, maybe you want to talk about your brand. It's info at menswear. style.co.uk Okay. Here is that interview with Casper brandy Peterson, co founder of lab fresh. Well, it's my great pleasure to introduce Casper brandy Peterson, co founder of lab fresh hiding today, Casper. I'm doing very well. Thanks for having me. Excellent. Well, thanks for coming on. Casper. Let me ask you whereabouts are you in the world? I am in Amsterdam right now. I'm originally from Copenhagen and I moved here seven years ago. Uh huh. Okay, well, the home of James Bond, the Diamonds Are Forever. I'm sure you're aware. On a more timely note, Casper For the uninitiated, can you give us a thumbnail sketch of who you are? And how you got to start lab fresh, please? Yeah, well, it's a little bit of a longer story. But I moved here to start my first business, which was a personal shopping service for men. And we had a crazy ride with a lot of venture capital and a lot of people. And when we sold them in 2016, I had to move to Berlin. And I was sitting down together with my favourite colleague and my girlfriend at the time. And we started looking into all these nice technologies that we saw in sportswear, and then in the Danish army, and we thought, let's try to put this into normal fashion clothing. And, yeah, that's basically what we did in 2017. putting it on Kickstarter, with the video we made in our apartment. And yeah, that went viral. And now and now we have a real business dip into the Kickstarter campaign. Why was this such a success? What do you put that down to? It's always hard to say. And I think there was this authenticity, authenticity to the campaign, because originally, we were just born in Germany, some guys to go the company and I didn't have to work that much. And then it was just a passion project. And we just wanted to drive around in a van and Logan and live in nature parks and run a business from our laptops. So we weren't really trying to sell that hat. But then it went viral. Let Bible and vice magazine and a lot of media picked it up. And then yeah, people were buying into because of that on Kickstarter, people just just want to help passionate entrepreneurs. Yeah, no, it's a great place to go. But it's, it's seems like such rarefied air that you hear great success stories coming from Kickstarter. So I'm always curious to know what that magic ingredient is when people do succeed. So what were you like your financial goals for to start with? We set a minimum goal of just 20,000 euros and that was what we needed to start the first batch production in Portugal. And then it's also important to say that I of course had a business before within ecommerce that became quite big, so I know how to scale an online marketing and so on. And, and that was not a popular part of why it would blow up. What business was that? No sir personal shopping business, it was called the cloakroom. And it's sort of similar to what you have in the UK, that's called threat threat.com. Okay, so this was more of a lateral move for you to get into garments and, and specialise in your own brand. Yeah, it actually came from this unknown of how a lot of brands were being run. And whenever I was excited, I was doing the buying and we were buying from Portsmouth and Hugo Boss and Tommy Hilfiger, and so on. With the cloakroom. And when I was speaking to these guys, and I was excited about new technology, they really didn't care about it. They just wanted to keep making nice designs and seasonal collections. And that deeply annoyed me. Because, yeah, I have this ingrained belief inside of me that you can use technology to make almost anything in the world better. So if you can create clothing that you wash less, and that will last for many years, then you buy less clothing. Also, that's good for the for your wallet. But it's also good for the whole planet. And the only one is not good for us the fashion industry. And I don't care about the fashion industry, because it doesn't fit their narrative of wanting to sell more clothes, right? I mean, as soon as you move away from that element of Oh, this can actually help you in the long run by buying less clothes, and just making the ones more sustainable. The ones that you have, then that kind of defeats the purpose for them. Yeah. Yeah, that was what astounded me in the beginning, when we tried to sell these type of technologies to existing brands, that they were not interested because it would mean that a loyal buyer of Cuba shirts would buy five shirts a year instead of 10, or 15. And that's, of course, bad business. Yeah. What is the technology? Exactly. So I'm just going to paint the picture a little bit. If you don't mind, Casper for what people might have already seen, I'm sure they've already seen online, on your website. And through YouTube Bloomberg articles, you'll see men dressed in either very dark navy blue polos, or white shirts, and they're having pints of milk and red wine thrown all over their garments. And this is almost like some kind of Kevlar. It's just bouncing off them. So explain to me some of the technology that we're using in these garments. And why we haven't seen this technology incorporated before. Yeah, so first to say is that we don't hold patents. So we only use existing technologies. We bundle different textile treatments together. And then we have the exclusive rights for that treatment mix. And, yeah, we do that in Switzerland, where they are really great at this stuff. It's obviously not a cheap red place to make fabric. But it's a cheap place to develop new versions all the time. Massive, we do it in China something then you make one fabric and you stick with that for a long time. And yeah, there's nothing special about the fabric itself. It's just cotton, sometimes a little bit of stretch, but just cotton. It's mainly about treating the fibres so that they close off for other fluids with without compromising on the breathability. Okay, that's interesting. And so how long has this been around for and how come it's not been installed in in garmins? Before this. So I would say that any brand with the decent amount of resources and commitment would be able to get this kind of technology up and running in within one year. The issue is that it makes it a lot more expensive to produce. And it's a lot more complicated in the supply chain, because you have to go back and select your own grace fabric and cotton fibres and so on. And most, most fashion brands, they will just buy fabric through through that supplier, they will never go to a mill or go to a cotton farm. So yeah, and then it just takes a long time to produce. And at the same time when you then pay more to make a shirt, and people will buy less per year because they they will look good for longer, then it just doesn't make sense for an established brand to push it. I just don't think they're seeing the big picture here, Casper, I mean, I'd love to go to some of these parties where we're all sitting around a dinner table just throwing stuff at each other like some kind of Greek. Imagine those videos going, Oh, that's exactly what it was. It was like a lead Bible and advice on these kind of immediate picking up because they thought it was hilarious to show throw stuff on our shirts. I also still think that's fun. I mean, it's it kind of sells itself really just through that USP doesn't it? I mean, my only, I wouldn't even call it a concern. But if I was in your shoes, starting up a company with this kind of ethos, how would I be able to introduce a new brand to the market with a price point that would justify a new brand, if that makes sense. Obviously people are willing to pay money for recognised brands, some people are, but new brands typically when they have a slightly more increased price point is always that reticent because they don't have the established loyalty brand. That makes sense. Yeah, exactly. You always have to provide an extra value so that you justify this switch. And especially for men, they are incredibly loyal to brands they have you know that men would stick with them not Nokia phone for a very long time, and so on and they will buy the Levi's 501 every year 10 years in a row. So yeah, in our case, we have than the opportunity to, you know, wear the same shirt for five days in a row. And once you get into that conformity, what can you say that? It just makes life a lot easier that you don't have to worry about what you're going to wear every morning. Yeah, Casper, I want to know about your time on Dragon's Den. I yes. Hooked on that TV show. Can you tell me about how it all worked? They approached you. you approach them? What? What was the? What was the process? Yeah, well, my girls girlfriend slash co founder and I have been watching every season of shark tank in the US and we love it. So we actually first did the Danish version of Dragon's Den in 2007 2018. And then, last week, we did it in Netherlands. And yeah, both both times it's, it has just been incredible. Because people instead of seeing a brand of Facebook ad they see Cashman ladder to actual, authentic people who are putting all the time and personal savings into a project. And so yeah, it has been blowing up with the noun, more than 65,000 people going to the website, and, you know, thousands of orders. And yeah, it's just insane. We just sit on them on the live chat every evening until bedtime and talk to talk to customers. So the British version did they come to you with? Did you go on the British one? Or was it the shark tank? The US one that you went on? No, we we went in the Danish version of Dragon's Den, and in the Dutch One, two years between? I see. And what did they offer you at the end? Or did they offer you anything? And yes, we in both shows, and the dragons liked our products, and gave us an offer. And we took took the deal in both shows. In the in the Dutch one that we did last week, we got it was from two dragons. One of them is actually my age, 34 years old. And she had she's called Nikki pleasant. And she has a brand called Nikki, which this very, very big and successful. So you know, it's quite a privilege to be able to pitch in front of someone like that. And we're How will you nerves because I always try and put myself in the boots of the people doing the pitches. I've got very little experience of talking in front of people. I'm okay behind a microphone when you can see me. I've got the privilege of the Halley's but actually getting in front of people in front of cameras. How did you prepare for that? Yeah, I would love to say that I was just Stone Cold pitcher with with no problems. But the reality is that they make it really uncomfortable like that this, there's this music in that. And then you stand behind the curtain. And then there's a red light blinking. And when you walk down the staircase, and these five multimillionaires are looking at you. And yeah, it's hard not to be uncomfortable. And then what people don't realise is that you're in there for an hour, even though in the in the in the TV programme, it looks like five minutes. Yeah. And for that one hour in the beginning, they're really tough on you. And they make you feel uncomfortable and they criticise a lot of what you do. And then they nice and slowly shift into praising you a lot. And being crazy nice. At least that that's how it was for us. So then you go from feeling really uncomfortable, because I think they don't like you to being very humbled because they say such nice things. Why they take you through the emotional rollercoaster by the sound of it. Yeah, exactly. Like a real TV promo. Yeah. Well, it's also they're trying to, I guess, be a bit disarming, you know, trying to be, you know, overly scrutinising when they perhaps don't need to be and then lure you into a false sense of security be nice, and then really lump something on you. Yeah. But also, um, it's not that like, if you look at how our company was doing in our first year, because we were lucky to go viral, the numbers are quite extraordinary for revenue and so on. So on pay by just looks like what the hell happened here, which gives us a lot of confidence when we talk to investors. Can anyone else invest now Casper the reason why I asked that is because I interviewed a gentleman for his company called just wears, it's a underwear brand. He did something similar. He went through the Kickstarter campaign almost followed your trajectory went on Dragon's Den, and through his website, you can actually now become a part of his journey, and invest and be part of the brand. Is there anything that you have that's open to the public like that? And we have been considering it because we actually did take a couple of angels in who will just customers. But yeah, we took a million euros and now in investments, and you know, it is Corona times and so on. But we Yeah, we also have some public funding to do to do our research from MIT and in the base over here in the Netherlands. So yeah, I don't I don't think necessarily more money was It would make us happier right now. And you touched upon COVID-19. How has that affected supply chains? How's that affected demand? What? What kind of ramifications are we seeing here? Yeah, well, we call it the biggest roller coaster ride of our career so far. Because it's, it's just so extreme. First, there was just a drop, and for two weeks there was ballin or in the store, and that never happened across all the countries, right? We, we, no country has more than 25% of our revenue. So it's just spread all over and then everything just stops. And then we have no idea. Tomorrow, we're going to do 10,000 euros or one euro. And then after a little while, the rebound starts. And now because of Dragon's Den, it's a big rebound. And then, yeah, then it looks better than ever. So it seems like people were a little bit nervous. But now because they prefer to buy online, it's good for us because we only sell online. Interesting. And, and then, yeah, I can see that people do expect deals. So we normally never do discounts. And now we did a few discounts for two weekends. And that's probably necessary analysis of our brand. Yeah. And also to offer people something, I guess, in times like these, you know, something to give back, I guess, to the fashion community. So always nice. Yeah. And then as an entrepreneur, I always, I have always been an aggressive young man, you know, not that young anymore. But I always wanted to grow really hard. That's why I've been raising a lot of venture capital for my businesses. And this year, I have to accept that we probably only grow very little. Maybe we grow 5%. And as a startup, founder that feels horrible. But then I have to shift my mindset and say, Hey, we're going to make a profit this year, I have been unprofitable for seven years in a row. So now I'm excited about making the first profit profit of my career. How old are you? Yeah, I'm 34. Okay, so that's no age at all. I mean, you can get another three or four marriages. And you know, it's by no means, Oh, I can't do that anymore. You know, I'm marrying my co founder, you know, it's intense. I really go anywhere. So what's next for the brand? I mean, what are we going to be doing now with the new investments? What can you see happening? So, I very much believe that the only way to come out stronger from a crisis is to act on the opportunities in front of you. And this crisis is also full of a lot, but a lot of opportunities. And some people will get a little bit annoyed when I say that. And I also get it. And, you know, my mom lost her job and a lot of my friends and we also have had to fire to people that were really good performers. So yeah, but I have to look at the opportunities. So to me, that is retail stores. And there's a lot of empty stores around Amsterdam and Copenhagen. Now, I think we can get some really nice short term contracts. So yeah, we want to open stores and some prime locations, starting in Amsterdam, and hopefully also Copenhagen. That is fascinating. Yeah, I do know, I've been weirdly and I suppose a bit mccobb Lee trying to get into that mindset as well. I heard a phrase, I think it's a political phrase that never let a good crisis go to waste. So when there is yes, happening, I mean, as horrible as this, there's always some angle on where you can perhaps, you know, boost the business and again, benefit your investors and everyone else's life around your rights. And no one likes seeing it. Yes, those who like seeing empty bricks and mortar, not me. Exactly. And you can get really nice short term contracts. Now, I feel normally after signed for five or 10 years find attractive location. And now maybe we can get a two or three year contract. Yeah. And I bet speaking from experience in these sort of things, you can probably get good negotiations on rates, overheads. So everything else thrown in. So yeah, good luck. Yeah. And then another thing is that this is a good time to reflect on what kind of company that we want to have, right. And I feel like we were pretty innovative with company culture. We took the whole team of 13 people to Bali last summer, and then we work in an office in the rice field for a month. And we serve in the morning, and we get a lot of work done. But we also bond and have fun. And you know, we we have a very creative office on our favourite canal and so on combined with the showroom. But the fact is, we still sit in the same office around the same table five days a week from nine to six. And I don't really need that. So now we will cancel the lease and then we will sit in various stores. You will work from home. We didn't so hard one or two days a week. And then yeah, we try to have a much more out of the box. And outside of the box office culture. Yeah, and we have had in the past, I think there's gonna be a lot of businesses shifting their template around now as well seeing how well it works with people working away from the office. So I always say just so the underlying is everybody's working and they hit deadlines. They can take a couple of hours off if they need to walk the dog, what have you. But you know, and I don't care how many hours you work, as long as you get a lot of shit done. Yeah. And then one week, you might work less and the sun is shining, and you relax and other weeks, I will need you in the weekend and late in the evening. And then you do that too. And I think the people that do take advantage will soon get found out. Because, you know, when deadlines aren't here for the first couple of excuses, and you go, Oh, this was the guy that didn't get up until 10am. Yes, we, we, we offer people six months contracts. So the first three contracts you get from us, it's for sale for six months. And if it doesn't feel 100% right, then it's better to stop. And after three contracts, you can get an indefinite contract. Right? Okay. That's good. incentivization I love the barley thing. I mean, I'm actually supposed to be out there right now. I had to cancel my trip. We were gonna Oh, yeah, we're gonna go hang out with some Komodo dragons. It was gonna be a whole two to three week backpacking tour. And I don't know when that's gonna happen again. But well, this scene does really well in that it'll boot and change that so many co working spaces and thousands of digital nomads and everyone are sitting and working on their own online business and I find it really inspiring. Yeah, the food's great. Yes. Yes. And this year we we will we want to go to South America farm and we want to do it every year for one month we do remote chip. Oh, well, why not? Casper? Where do I sign up? That first looking for some wine on some clothes. No problemo. Yeah, it's not so hard and suited with your phone and you got an Instagram app. Listen, Casper. I've really enjoyed speaking to you the website. Lab fresh.edu is the place that people should be heading and and really just fall fall down a couple of rabbit holes. There's some great content on there. You can learn all about the technologies of sustainability, as well as the clothes and the garments looking pretty cool and fresh as well. And it has this very wardrobe for life as in the garments on ostentatious with big huge graphic logos on the front for these garments that kind of serve over time. You know, they can uniformly sit in pretty much any Okay, like, minimalistic Scandinavian design. That's the only thing we touch. We are very much inspired by tiger, Sweden and sleep. Okay. And Samsung Samsung these kind of Scandinavian brands. Yeah, the minimalism that was the word I was groping for. Thank you. Yes, I'll let that word in later as my own. Okay, Casper, I'll let you go. But thanks again for taking time out of your day. Yeah, thank you, Peter. Brilliant. Casper brandy P is in there. Thank you Casper lab. fresh.eu is the place to go and check out those amazing futuristic garments. That's it for me. Thank you all for listening. Make sure that you liking subscribing you're smashing the like button. If those kids say it does help us. In all seriousness, leave a review and tell a friend and all that gubbins In the meantime, info at menswear. store.co UK is a place if you want to send us a message if you want to get in touch maybe be on the show. So until next time, remember it's only fashion people and you're never fully dressed without a smile.

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