#376 - Kevin Lavelle - Building Mizzen+Main, Influencer Partnerships, His New Startup Harbor

Kevin Lavelle is the CEO & Cofounder of Harbor. He’s also the Founder and Chairman of the Board at Mizzen+Main, where he invented the world’s first performance fabric dress shirt, ultimately driving it to hundreds of millions of dollars in sales.

He successfully raised a growth round from L Catterton and established partnerships with athletes like Phil Mickelson, JJ Watt, and dozens of others. Today, Mizzen+Main has more than ten of its own stores with 1,000 retailers also carrying its products.

We discuss:

- Starting and growing Mizzen+Main

- The intricacies of celebrity-equity deals

- The inspiration for founding Harbor

- The realities of building physical products vs. software

- Stories with Phil Mickelson and J.J. Watt

We'd appreciate you filling out our audience survey, so we can continuously work on providing relevant content to our listeners. 

https://www.thefortpod.com/survey

Links:

Mizzen+Main - https://www.mizzenandmain.com/

Harbor - https://harbor.co/

Kevin on X - https://x.com/kevinslavelle

The Phil Mickelson Commercial - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45xF1C76I88

Support our Sponsors:

BetterPitch: https://bit.ly/42d9L0I

Fort: https://bit.ly/FortCompanies

Follow Fort on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/fort-companies/

Topics:

(00:00:00) - Intro

(00:03:49) - Kevin’s early career and inspiration to found Mizzen+Main

(00:07:25) - Building the prototype

(00:11:38) - The early days of building the brand

(00:15:16) - The impact of sponsoring the Tim Ferriss Podcast (x)

(00:21:35) - Choosing the name “Mizzen+Main”

(00:23:50) - Inventory Management 

(00:26:55) - Starting today, what would be your hiring order?

(00:28:32) - Celebrity partnership stories: J.J. Watt & Phil Mickelson

(00:48:17) - The inspiration for founding Harbor

(01:03:17) - Bringing on a Co-Founder and building hardware

(01:17:19) - Marketing approaches

(01:14:56) - How celebrity equity deals work

Chris on Social Media:

The Fort Podcast on Twitter/X: https://x.com/theFORTpodcast

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thefortpodcast

LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/45gIkFd

Watch The Fort on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3oynxNX

Visit our website: https://bit.ly/43SOvys

Leave a review on Apple: https://bit.ly/45crFD0

Leave a review on Spotify: https://bit.ly/3Krl9jO 

The FORT is produced by Johnny Podcasts