KJ Bryant: The Marketplace for Athletes’ Gears (Full Transcript)

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Ronen Ainbinder 0:55

Today's episode features one of the co-founders of NARP Clothing, which is one of the most creative ideas I've heard of recently.

NARP Clothing is a marketplace that allows former student-athletes to profit off their name, image, and likeness by selling their owned apparel.

They literally want to help student-athletes monetize years of hard work through their platform.

Our guest today is also a former NCAA baseball player from Clemson and College of Charleston.

I can't wait for today's Halftime Snack, so without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, KJ Bryant.

KJ Bryant 1:26

Man, I was one of the best intros that somebody ever again. How are you?

Ronen Ainbinder 1:32

I'm doing great, man. How's everything with you?

KJ Bryant 1:35

I'm doing all right, man.

Ronen Ainbinder 1:36

My icebreaker because this is something I started doing a couple of episodes ago; I threw a super quick icebreaker. My icebreaker for you, man, is what song or artist you used to play before games to pump you up.

KJ Bryant 1:52

Ah, use play to pump me up. I have several. So I'm gonna give several. OK, let's go. to pump me up. I would say, Kevin Gates, Moneyman. Those two artists definitely got it right.

Ronen Ainbinder 2:09

All right, you guys. Make sure you get that on your playlist to pump you up. But now, let's switch to the real talk about why we're here. We're going to talk about NARP; we're going to talk about you, man, your story. So how about you start off by just telling us the story of how exactly what got you inspired to start NARP clothing? What's the story? Tell us about it.

KJ Bryant 2:36

Yeah, so I started out my collegiate career at Clemson. And we received tons of team-issued gear in the fall in the summer, excuse me in the spring. And it was like that for my three years there at tons of gear. And then, obviously, my collegiate career ended, and I had an internship in Columbia, South Carolina. And my colleague, who graduated from Clemson, offered to buy one of my clubs and polos off of me and went out to my car, and I had an extra Polo in my car. I took the one that was offered to me. He gave me 60 bucks. And that's just got the wheels turning; I was like, man, I have more gear.

I know some football players who were more popular than me. So that kind of sparked the idea, and I googled like, Hey, where? Where can I sell my gear? And I realized that there was not a market for a marketplace out there. So I got with Patrick, my former teammate at Clemson, close friends. And I told him about it. And he was the one that pushed me off the edge. And he was like, Hey, man, let's just go for it. So we got together to reach out to one of his friends who build websites to build a website, and we just went from there. We started with just our close friends at Clemson. The website started out just Clemson athletes because we have several hypotheses to test people looking for the big-time name or were they just looking to issue gear. We started with Clemson because if we couldn't sell the Clemson Paul, we can't sell because they're very popular over here in the states. The football team was coming off a national championship, so Paul, the brand of the Paul, was very, very popular. So initially, we started out with just six to eight clips of athletes. And the locker sold out, so we reached out to other friends at other schools, and we know we just grew by word of mouth. So that's kind of how it started.

Ronen Ainbinder 4:50

That's awesome. It seems like it's that kind of business that you don't see until you see it because you already have the have like the upper rail. It's sitting right there in your closet, but until you figure out that there's a chance that you can monetize these things that are just sitting there. When do you see it like you cannot unsee it, like how you think like, OK, so what are all the other things besides my upper end that I can have or that I or property athletes can also monetize? So I guess that there's just a huge brainstorm of ideas that came out of that. Right after that happened, man, and I think it's awesome. I think it's a great idea for me. When I saw the website and saw the business, I was like, Wow, man, I can't believe this doesn't exist. This is a great idea. But let's say let's, let's suppose right now that you're writing an Uber man with Mr. Elon Musk, Richest Man on Earth, CEO of Tesla, CEO of SpaceX, a legend on technology in space, and whatever you say. But let's say you have to convert convincing using only two arguments. You have to convince him to drop his career, everything he's doing, join you, and you guys close, not clothing. So what are those two arguments that you would use?

KJ Bryant 6:11

man, to convince Elon Musk to quit Tesla to quitting? The boring company? Excuse me, boring to quit SpaceX? What, I'm probably gonna sidestep that answer. I was quite shocked to convince him that he should hire me. All right, I like what Elon has going on is great. When I will convince him like, hey, let me be some type of sales rep marketing something, so I'll use that Uber or taxi ride. To pitch me to get a job at Tesla. Definitely answered the question, but I would probably go that route, man, special.

Ronen Ainbinder 6:58

I like it. Man. Not everyone gets a chance to ride an Uber with Elon Musk. So if you get it, you probably would seize it. Man. I

Unknown Speaker 7:06

I would definitely ask him for a seat on SpaceX to space a seat.

Ronen Ainbinder 7:12

On the next manned mission to Mars. Yeah. And so I guess I mean, you mentioned a little bit about the website and how it works, connecting a seller and a buyer. But what, like, what's the technology behind it is it just a platform where both the athlete sign up. They create this closet, where they can include the things they own and then upload their photos. And then, just fans, regular people can sign up and come to the website and see the closet. So like, what's, like, what's the rationale behind the workflow or the technology behind our clothing?

KJ Bryant 7:57

Yeah, so pretty much how it works is that I started with sign up on a patch when I would do our own due diligence to figure out if they're still student-athlete, that they still have student-athletes; obviously, unfortunately, they cannot sell. But suppose they are a former student-athlete or a current professional passion. In that case, I will prove them to sell either he or I will shoot the athlete slash vendor a text message. And we have a cool video slash walkthrough shows them how the sale process works and is pretty much hands-off for Patrick and me, as far as the athlete, they stay in possession of the gear, they shipped directly to the customer because we want to provide that intimate experience of connecting the fan with athletes and athletes, they upload the products themselves, they pick the prices, and they should just text message like, hey, everything's uploaded, can you release my Walker. Our passion and I do we review it, and then we press OK. Then their locker is live on the website to where Patrick and I the past couple of months, we worked hard to streamline the whole process, so everything can be done within the athlete's hand, take a picture, they upload to their locker, they have their own dashboard, where they can track their sales, they can track to see how many people viewed each product. And then, based on the data that they have, they may need to say OK, maybe 300 people viewed this product and haven't had a sale yet. Maybe it's overpriced, so then they can tweak the prices, they can go up, they can go down, they can control the ship, and beware, OK, do I want free shipping in my locker? Or do I want you to know the customer to pay for shipping? The curve, so the control is in the athlete and all patches when I'm doing we're just, we're just connecting the fan to the athlete.

Ronen Ainbinder 9:54

And I understand that this is a technology. Well, it's a solution for student-athletes or former student-athletes. Still, I was wondering if this solution can eventually evolve into professional athletes. I see myself buying a Messi, Jersey that was used by him in one of the games. What wouldn't I know what I mean? Sometimes players just give away their jerseys and then even between other players. Still, I guess it would be fun to see if a player that played against LeBron got his jersey well in the NBA doesn't happen. But let's say in soccer, Messi gave his jersey to these other guys, and these other guys go online and try to auction it like. Could this potentially be explored? And a scale even in the professional realm? Or do you think it's mostly directed towards students because of how regulations and things in more professional leagues prevent athletes from doing all these kinds of traits?

KJ Bryant 10:57

Yeah, so we do have some professional athletes on the platform. If we are passionate, I would love to venture off into the, you're the European football. But we know that will take time because we have slightly more hurdles to go after with professional athletes. After all, you have to contact their marketing person or the agent. And sometimes you gotta hit the agent up once or twice or three times, versus a former student-athlete, or come July 1, with a current student-athlete, we can go directly to the athlete and make them able to be sailing within that same day. So with professional athletes, if we would go that route, we would scale probably slower just because there are different speed bumps with getting hold of a professional athlete as

Ronen Ainbinder 11:53

but it's something that can happen eventually.

KJ Bryant 11:56

100% 100% Yeah,

Ronen Ainbinder 11:58

awesome. I see that happening in like, let's say, 10 years.

Hey, I hope before I hope I say one too, then 10 years to have it, super-efficient, maybe one or two to have it for real? Yeah. But, I was caught up thinking when I was writing these questions, and I thought, OK. Hence, you guys are, bringing the game home to a fan, in a way, because those are things that probably athletes used, or they get, they were; they were handed those by the teams and probably also never used them. But it's, it's like bringing the game home. And if you're a big fan, and if you're a real follower, then you have these different opportunities in this different experience to have an item that was born or whatever. But I wonder if any other experiences you guys are creating, for either students, athletes, or just fans, that it's kind of new and innovative in the space? Is there anything that you guys do that I'm not seeing?

KJ Bryant 13:09

So I would say, just off the surface, we are creating a unique experience, with not being a marketplace, it's two-sided. We have two different users; we have the athlete. Then we also have the customer, with an athlete, we are solving the problem of, when you get done playing, you have a lot of gear that you don't want, yeah, maybe you have a couple items that you want to keep just to keep, say, like a jersey a quality hoodie. Still, you have like 15 to 20 pieces that you just do not want. And also, with the fans, we're providing the opportunity for them to have exclusive gear that they cannot buy in a store. We look at the baseball programs, the lacrosse program for soccer, wrestling those messy sports, they're not selling a Clemson hoodie with baseball on it. I mean, I live in Greenville now. I can't go to any, I can't go within Clemson and farming and clubs and baseball hoodie, but you can go on our clothing and find that and take it a step further. Let's say you're living in Texas; you can't go to a Dick's Sporting Goods or to Academy sports and buy Clemson. Most likely, you'll see a Texas at Texas Tech at TCU. Still, suppose you want to qualify Clemson Mikey to drop it. In that case, that's coming directly from the athlete. one thing that will give Nike and Adidas kudos is that the gear they give the athlete is very durable and of good quality. So we're providing that experience to say that they can buy gear that they cannot buy anywhere else. The athlete gets to profit off the name, image, and likeness and still gear they know; they're just going to give it away to family friends for free.

Ronen Ainbinder 15:04

I see I like that man; I like it a lot. The whole niche side of it, as you mentioned, that you can't find pieces of gear up or out of specific schools, just because they're maybe not as famous or not as big as others. I feel like that's also awesome because you're putting a little more exposure to the smaller schools and taking off the spotlight from the bigger schools they have, their distribution centers, and their apparatus everywhere in the country. And even you may find it, outside of the US. So, I guess that it's also a chance to give the smaller guys a chance to have some exposure and be out there. So I think it's awesome, man. Let's talk about the business model. Man, how do you guys make money? Matt now? Or how do you guys want to make money in the future? How do you see that plan changing in the next five to 10 years? Let's say after you guys incorporate the platform 100%, you also maybe expand it to Europe; let's say how do you see it changing? So let's just talk about that.

KJ Bryant 16:16

Yeah, so now, an ARP is a profitable patch, and we aren't taking a salary. We're reinvesting every dollar that we make back into the company; we call it just a feeding beast because we want this to grow. So right now, the athlete, they come on to sale, we take a small percentage of the sale. And most athletes, they're totally fine with that. But we do see us being able to scale, as a marketplace, and with our fee not being as high because we create this platform to make sure that the student-athlete keynote can make money, the way that we start seeing our revenue or our net revenue go up has a large value. And with that, not very, very, we plan on positioning ourselves to be the established marketplace come July 1; western athletes can profit off the name, image, and likeness to start a stage. You look at Michigan, and you look at Florida, Bama, Alabama in the past and legislation right now. So we want to capitalize on those opportunities right there. And also, just think down the line. And, years from now, we have good traffic on our website. In the past nine, we could have paid ads on a website. But we're just, we just don't want to go that route yet. So that's another way that we can generate revenue. And also, we do have other parallels within our that are in the beta stages. We just haven't launched it yet. And I'm excited about that. I don't want to speak on it just yet. But we can do a lot of cool things with just the word NORC. And with athletes to realize our Rolodex of athletes, there's a finite amount of gear. And after they sell out passionately, we always think about me, like how we can continue making money for this athlete. And we have sorted things and beta stages that we plan on rolling out in a couple of weeks.

Ronen Ainbinder 18:24

You guys are looking for investors.

KJ Bryant 18:27

So right now, we're 100% bootstrap, our overhead per month is like $122, we're very lean, patronized, we're very scrappy. But if the right investor comes around to provide the help that Patrick and I are looking for, we're not looking for just your money. Because if that's the case, passion, we have some money saved up. So we're very picky on who we know, quote, unquote, bring into the family.

Ronen Ainbinder 19:02

That's awesome. And yeah, and we are open to investors. We're

Unknown Speaker 19:05

not gonna tell nobody. We don't want anything and just not talk to you. Yeah,

Ronen Ainbinder 19:10

yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Now, just to get it in, like in context, let's say an athlete has a jersey or a cap or whatever, they want to sell it online. And what would be the benefit from selling it through NARP clothing? Instead of going through? Let's say, for instance, eBay or another alternative website? Is there any advantage it can also come in in financial terms or in exposure or in? I don't know. That's why I want to ask you if there's an advantage that you guys offer that none of the existing platforms may offer to these athletes.

KJ Bryant 19:48

I would say our one advantage that we have now is the feasibility to where an athlete can sign up and sell and eBay the seller can contact you. And they can kind of just try to give you another offer. But with NARP, what you see on the website is what you get. And we make the process simple for the athlete. And also, we're very, we're very niche II to where when somebody scrolls NARP clothing, they were looking for to issue gear on eBay, you could be looking for a car, you could be looking for a watch. So there's a lot of options out there.

Ronen Ainbinder 20:27

Yeah, and one of the other things that I liked about the design of your website is that you literally put the face of the athlete, he on the action, like playing the game, and you say, like the name of the athlete, and then close it. So you're like, you feel like you are entering the closet. So I felt like that was creative.

KJ Bryant 20:40

Yeah, yeah. And one thing that I like is each locker is going to be different in each. So we have three returning customers. And one thing I like about North because the customer experience is going to vary from athlete to athlete. Because, we, we add, we tell the athlete, hey, include a nice handwritten note. And when the customer emails Patrick, and I say, Hey, I love the experience, or the note that the athlete left or the athlete, they may have included an extra shirt, depending on how much money that the customer spent, that makes it worthwhile for Patrick and me.

Ronen Ainbinder 21:29

That's awesome. And I'm sure that something they cannot do on eBay, because also on eBay, you kind of like another seller. And so here, it's more about the athletes; it's more about the experience for the customer. As you said, it's more about the website's design, how the customers feel when they buy, so I think I liked the experience side of it a lot.

KJ Bryant 21:50

Yeah, passionate; we're very, very grateful to each customer that we have because it took many ups and downs just to get to where we're at. We're very, we're humbly grateful for each person that buys gear from our website, either Patrick and Me; once an item is delivered, we will personally reach out to the customer and ask them how do they like it because one thing about NARP is that, we have our name on the website, so we have, our reputation on the line. And I don't want to buy something from the NARP and say, Oh, that was like sup, or, the gear wasn't as advertised. I'm, I'm a big, big believer in customer service.

Ronen Ainbinder 22:46

That's awesome. That's awesome. KJ. Man, we're running out of time. But I want to ask you this one less personal question. And I want to ask you what you remember about it being the best day of your life? And why

KJ Bryant 23:00

Am I the best day of my life? That is, that is a great one. Um, what? I don't. I'm gonna go with the best day of my life. Within North. I would probably say it was the first sale that we had. Patrick and I were very, very, we were scrappy. I was driving around Greenville meeting people selling gear. And I would say the first sale that we had was on April 20, 2020. And I remember it was a Clemson jersey. And I was just so happy because this is one of the things were like, once you have some, I believe in your business that's not your family or friends. It solidifies everything that you stayed up late for. So that's probably my best day. And that's very inspiring. Kevin, man,

Ronen Ainbinder 24:06

I think that NARP is a very creative idea. I like how you guys focus on the experience and the customer on the athlete. You give a lot of value to those things, and I see a lot of success coming your way. I can't wish anything but the best of luck to you guys. And I can't wait to see what's gonna come out of NARP in one, three, and 10 years. And I'm looking forward to it. Thank you so much for coming to the Halftime Snacks.