S6, Ep 20: All Things Grundens with Curtis Graves and Jim Kershaw

Marvin Cash: Hey, folks. It's Marvin Cash, the host of the Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by Curtis Graves, Director Of Product, and Jim Kershaw, Design Director at Grundens. Curtis and Jim share Grundens' design philosophy, discuss new and upcoming products, and share their refreshing approach to connecting with customers. If you want to understand what makes Grundens tick, this episode's for you. But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out. And check out our Patreon community. It's a great way to support the show and our partners. We have everything from discounts on tying materials and guide trips to small group classes and a shout out to this episode's sponsor. This episode's sponsored by our friends at Norvise, and their motto is, tied Better Flies Faster, and they produce the only vice that truly spins. The Norvise team continues to rack up the miles. Next stops are the fly fishing show in Pleasanton and the Texas Fly Fishing and Brew Festival in Mesquite. You owe it to yourself to drop by the Norvise booth to see the only vice that truly spins for yourself. Not going to be in Pleasanton or Mesquite? No worries. Norvise's entire 2024 show schedule is up on their website. Head over to www.nor-vice.com today to see if the Norvise team will be coming to a town near you. Now on to our interview.

Marvin Cash: Well, Curtis and Jim, welcome to the Articulate Fly.

Jim Kershaw: Thank you. Thanks for having us.

Curtis Graves: Thanks, Marvin. It's, uh, really exciting to be here.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I'm super excited to have you guys on. And, uh, we have a tradition on the Articulate Fly. We like to talk about, uh, having our guests share their earliest fishing memory. And I guess I'll kind of traffic-cop this a little bit. I don’t usually do two person interviews. I’ll say Curtis, go first, and then Jim can go unless you guys want to change the order.

Jim Kershaw: No, that works. Go ahead, Curtis.

Curtis Graves: Okay. Well, um, my earliest fishing memory, I think I grew up in eastern Carolina and, uh, not far from you. Um, and, uh, my first memory was catching bluegill on cut hot dogs with my granddad. And, uh, it was pretty interesting when we had, ah, there was a dock kind of down near the house that was like neighbor's property, and there was a pond, and we just go out there and like grab a hot dog, put it on a hook, and fish it under a bobber. And, um, kind of from that point, never really looked back. Here we are, like, 40 something years later.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, that's pretty awesome. That's, uh, pretty similar to me. I've got actually a picture here in my office of fishing for trout on a cane pole with my grandfather in the , uh, the mountains of Virginia. And he's got one of those old school aluminum worm boxes on his belt, and he's wearing, like, we didn't call them wellies because they weren't that fancy back then, but basically, uh, knee high, uh, rubber boots.

Curtis Graves: That's awesome. That's awesome.

Marvin Cash: How about you, Jim?

Jim Kershaw: You know, it's a good question. I've been racking my brain on it a little bit. Um, You know, I'd say probably my earliest was actually surf fishing. So surf fishing with my dad, um, and my brother, really just out probably the most, I guess the area where I would think most is kind of out by Edisto Island. So I grew up in the Carolinas as well. Um, and just you know putting on bloodworms or shrimp and just tossing it out there and hoping for the best. Trying to go at that time, you know waist high for you know going into surf was like, it was treacherous. It's like, I don't know if I can go any deeper than this. And you weren't really casting that far. Sometimes dad would cast for me, but just the excitement of just watching that rod just kind of hit a little bit and trying to determine between you know, um, a wave and a strike, um, was just always awesome. And that's been a tradition. We try to do, um, some surf fishing or get together, ideally once a year, and have been doing it since. And it's been awesome to be part of an industry that we love to do stuff outside, which is great.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's always funny because I think people in the western part of this state, it's always easier for us to get to the South Carolina coast than to do that eight hour drive all the way out to the kind, uh, of what is a kid growing up, I thought of as kind of the traditional part of the North Carolina coast, like Atlantic beach and Emerald Isle and places like that. Um, and it's interesting too, you know, I know both of you have slightly different paths in the way that you got to Grundens and you know, Curtis, do you want to kind of talk to us about, kind of like how you ended up being the product design guy at Grundens?

Curtis Graves: Yeah. Well, to back up on the bloodworms. I remember having a distinct fear of bloodworms as a kid. And, uh, we'd go down to Rudy Inlet, and, uh, my dad had this, uh, Zebco, stainless steel Zebco 33. I think he probably still has it. I would not touch a bloodworm to save my life when I was a kid. 

Marvin Cash: Terrifying.

Curtis Graves:  Yeah, terrifying. I was like, “this thing could eat me”. But yeah, I think on a journey, you know, I guess to clarify, I'm Product Director. I'm more of the strategy guy. Jim's on here because he's the design guy. He does, like, all the hard work. Um, uh, and I'll let him cover himself, but this goes way back to working in retail for me. When I was, you know, I worked in the bike shop in college. Um, I really worked in a bike shop from the point that you could have a job. And I was old enough to like sweep the floor and put, um, beach cruisers together. I met the Trek product manager at a clinic one night, the rep brought in, uh, uh, uh, the product manager for one of the bike lines. I can't remember exactly which line it was at the time, but likely it was like a mountain bike line or something. Um, but there was a chance that, it basically was an eye opening moment of, like, this was a job that you could do as an adult, and for people that worked in the industry, there was a path to get there. Um, so I guess from that moment on, it was like, this is what I want to do. And, um, I even changed my major to go get some background in economics to be a little more business savvy coming into this thing. And from there, it was like, just figure out a way in the ground floor at a company. And, uh, I started out answering the phones as a temp at Solomon in the ski industry, um, because it was fairly adjacent to what we'd been doing. And it was an open role that paid, and honestly, it paid like, $12 an hour, um, with no health insurance benefits. And the job ran, uh, from November or, sorry, from October, uh, first through April 1, essentially. So it was like we knew that April first you're out of work, but you had essentially six months to make hay and build relationships. And, uh, I guess from that point on, um, I turned it into, uh, basically a full time customer service job, then into like the product role for the guy, helping the product guys out by tuning skis and going to demos and just kind of doing the grunt work for a few years there. And, uh, um, the company relocated. And when the company relocated, that was kind of my in as a product manager, um, and you know, I guess from there, uh, a little bit of a long winded story, but it's relevant here. Um, I went to Black Diamond kind of from Solomon to get closer to the R&D process. Um, and then the door opened up at Sims Fishing in Bozeman, Montana and it was like Montana was on the table and a product job in fishing, and it was like, wow, this is like, kind of the stars aligning for the foot into the fishing world. So that's honestly where I picked up all my apparel experience. I'd been a hard goods guy all the way up to that point. Uh, um, so put, uh, a few years in, in Bozeman. And then I'd always known who Grundens was, just know, I guess, the industry, and also just kind of seeing their stuff on the coast. And, um. Uh, when the crew at Grundens reached out, it was really interesting. Like, wow, these guys are building a sport fishing collection. There's an opportunity to come land at this brand and go build something. And I was beyond stoked to go take that opportunity to jump on board and basically take this brand from where it was. And we've tripled the business almost since 2017, um, when I joined the company.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and so you left probably, what? About three or four years before the Vista acquisition of Sims?

Curtis Graves: Uh, well, I mean I guess closer to like five. 

Marvin Cash: Okay.

Curtis Graves: I've been at Grundens six years, just that last month. Um, and I think that deal went down last year. I think like when you work inside of a company, you're really acutely aware of what's happening, I think, from potential transactions, and you're always trying to get things in shape, right? Like your tasks, our job is tasked with the health of the business, so we have a little more visibility into, um, what's going on in the long haul or like kind of the bigger picture behind the scenes, uh, uh, with management and just generally just kind of how companies are funded in the back end.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, very neat kind of, If you got to talk about bloodworms, I'll tell you that my first mountain bike was a Trek 930.

Curtis Graves: Nice.

Marvin Cash: That I bought with I think probably my first tax refund for my first real job out of school. I went and bought that bike, so.

Curtis Graves: That's awesome. 
Marvin Cash: Yeah.
Curtis Graves: That’s awesome. There's some kid out there that put that thing together, you know?

Marvin Cash: Yeah, well, it's still hanging in my garage. And then I graduated, uh, to a LeMond road bike, which I barely rode because I moved from Atlanta to Charlotte and was afraid I was going to get killed in the traffic. But Jim, how about you? How did you make your way to Grundens?

Jim Kershaw: Yeah, I guess kind of in some ways a little similar of trying to navigate my way. You know, I went to school up in Appalachian State. I had no idea what I wanted to do up there. I loved to fish. Kind of went up there initially for sports, tore some ACLs, and decided that this time to focus on a career. So I ended up stumbling into this major called industrial design. In that industrial design, I really just wanted to take metal-shop and blacksmithing and it was like, in order to take this class, you need to pursue this major. And I'm like, cool, great. Um, so it was really about, there It was kind of this cutting my teeth on what design was, um, from a traditional sense. Appalachian State's very good in a furniture sense of school. And during my time, we were kind of some of the guinea pigs of first coming out for product. And, uh, we had a little bit more of a sponsored studio program with Irwin Tools, which was based out of Huntersville at the time and that turned into an internship, which turned into a full time role, which got me cutting my teeth in hard goods from a design standpoint, but also focusing on tradesmen and, um, the construction environment. So it was all about durability, it was all about performance. It had to live in nasty conditions, and it was all about field research. And that experience there kind of influenced how I approached things, um, all the way down the spectrum. So, spent time there and realized I've got a passion for the outdoors. I don't know how many jackets I have, I don't know how many backpacks I have, but there were a lot, and there still are a lot. And, um, I knew I wanted to get into that, but I couldn’t sew, I didn't really know much about fabrics at all. I couldn't tell you the difference between a nylon and a polyester, what a woven versus a knit was. And so this opportunity came up to move to Baltimore, uh, to work for a brand called STX for lacrosse and ice hockey gear and it was a great opportunity to blend what I knew from hard goods and creating durable gear with learning how to do soft goods. Um, and so I focused mainly on protective equipment there for a few years for both STX and Nike and it was a great way to have  cut my teeth into soft goods and then from there, um, I realized, hey, this is great, but I didn't play lacrosse growing up. I played soccer mostly and some football, and realized I wanted to kind of get back to something I really enjoyed from a root standpoint and kind of found my way all the way up here in Vermont at Orvis. Um, and it was a great time to join the crew there. We built a lot of great stuff, and it was really where I kind of, to Curtis's point, where I really picked up on some of the more technical elements of, let's say you know, construction and wader and jacket and footwear and all that sort of stuff. Those, and I had a really strong passion for that, but then you know, through that, spent my time there and then with similar to what Curtis mentioned, there's this opportunity at this brand that was you know, it kind of combined the two ends of my spectrum, at least from the career path. It was developing this really hardcore, rugged gear for people that work at sea and that work on the water. And that also the passion for fishing, uh, which I loved growing up, and it was an opportunity to build something special. And with that is just kind of how I think I ended up here. I look at it from, yeah, I, uh, can't explain it really any other way, other than it seemed like the right time, the right opportunity to go build something special for a new brand, let's say, and fly but with almost 100 years of heritage and just grit from whether you're watching Deadliest Catch or something like that, or no commercial fishing, it was really cool. So that's what brought me here. I've been here for going on almost two years, so, still fresh.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's very neat, too, listening to your stories about you know, it’s interesting because I've talked to other people that have kind of gotten into roles like yours or similar roles in the industry. There are not a lot of them, and it's always amazing, like, how you have to be really determined and grinded out. It's kind of like, reminds me, like, getting rebounds in basketball, you just got to keep staying around the rim, uh, and be relentless about it.

Jim Kershaw: Absolutely.

Curtis Graves: It's very intentional, and I tell people that all the time. We've actually posted a category manager role over the weekend, so my inbox is going to be blowing up here kind of, in this next week. But I guess if anybody that's applying for that job is listening to this thing, it's intentional and it's not something you just kind of accidentally find yourself doing one day. It for sure is like, wow, you have to be really, I think, just engaged with wanting to do it because there's a lot of hours and there's a lot of work and a lot of meetings and a lot of, like, um, you have to be really comfortable with failure. You know, I think that’s been the biggest part of the kids that I've seen come into this role, or the younger folks that are younger in their career, the ones that have gone on to be wildly successful are the ones that aren't afraid to fail and they don't see their failure as actually, like, a personal failure. They see it as a part of the process that actually makes better product in the end.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's interesting you say that, because I have a 21 year old and a 15 year old son, and I'm always coaching them to learn how to fail faster, right?

Curtis Graves: Yeah.

Marvin Cash: Um, and so you know, Curtis, it sounds like you were kind of at ground zero when Grundens’ decided to enter the fly fishing space. Can you speak a little bit to kind of, the opportunity that they saw in the industry and kind of the problems that they wanted to solve?

Curtis Graves: Yeah, I'll back up even one level on that and say go a level higher of sport fish. Our brand launched into sport fishing in 2015 and I would say it was a pretty rocky start to that category, and I attribute that to the head of the product team was also the owner of the company, and, uh, he had a commercial fishing background. He was in this business because he loved commercial fishing, and he also sport fished. I think his hobby was to go down to Ba and spend a ton of time fishing down there, and he saw the opportunity to take the brand. It was like an owner of the company saying, hey, I want to invest in this path, but I don't really truly know how to do, um, was he, Mike was for sure, uh, uh, in it. If he didn't know how to figure it out, he was going to pick it up and carry the company on his entire back to get there and that was just his style and the way it worked and I think we're better off for those first few years in sport fishing today still. We learned a lot as a brand, and I think we're still learning a lot as a brand on like how to nuance this brand in that space. I  came out of a strategy session, I guess, what was it last Wednesday? And we put up on the board, we put: We win when we do Grundens right, we fail when we chase competitors. Um, and that's kind of become like, and it got actually thrown up in an all company meeting, and I was like, wow, I didn't realize that that was so sticky around here. But, yeah, I mean I think just trying to understand what it is that the consumer, and it really, truly isn't about us going into sport fishing. It's the consumer wanting that product from Grundens, that has to be consumer centric, consumer led, like fundamental shifts like this. Otherwise you're going to spend a lot of money and you're going to fail. Um, there were a lot of people that did believe in us as a brand. There's a lot of crossover, I think, from guys that have worked in the Bering Seas to folks that’ll come out of Alaska with a pile of cash and their money and they're going to go live in Mexico for a little bit and they're going to fish the way they want to fish. Um, and I think the heritage there, for sure, kind of led us to, there was a path forward for us in sport fish, and that was around building rugged, durable goods, um, and building just enduring, lasting products that people could get at a value and it really kind of resonated with, uh, the blue collar angler in a lot of ways. Since then we've tried a lot of paths, a lot of different price points, a lot of different solutions, and what typically has been the products that have been successful for us are the ones that kind of check the boxes around rugged, durable, really great price value relationships and a meaningful product for the consumer. Um, we were selling..like we had rainware, but it wasn't, I would say, a pinnacle product in the market that we could go and put out in the marketplace and realize that this was the best product that we could possibly produce and it was rather expensive for what it was um, so we engaged Gore-Tex. That was like one of the, kind of the first jobs that I had here at the company back in 18’ was to build a proposal to Gore and go get a trademark license. At Gore-Tex, you have to be licensed as a brand to be able to purchase the laminates and work with a certified factory. We launched the Gore collection in 2019 and that was the moment where there was everything before the Gore launch and everything after the Gore launch. It was a true inflection point in the business and sport fish for us and it really got a lot of, I would say it got a lot of eyes on the brand. It abled us to engage new ambassadors and new pros, it enabled us to open up new dealers, um, and kind of at the same time, we basically expanded footwear into sport fish. So it was like a one, two punch into the market and I would say that the Gore launch and the footwear launch opened up enough doors, and opened up enough new dealers, and enough new buyers eyes on our brand that the request started coming of like, hey, you guys built great product, you build bibs, you build Goretex jackets, we want a wader from you and I was the last one that wanted to go build a wader. Like honestly, I was like, guys, we have these product roadmap meetings and strategy sessions, and, uh, waders were talked about for four years before we ever launched them. Um, and it definitely turned into, for me, it turned into like, hey, let's get this right. Let's not race into this market and I think Jim and I know enough about making waders to know that the quickest way to fail in business is to go make waders. I guess we needed the momentum, and I guess I intentionally held the launch back of waders until I felt like we had that, there was a tipping point, I think, around a number of dealers that were on board and a number of dealers that were asking, and I would say also just a general level of frustration with the competitive set out there that we would have to go, we knew we had to go take somebody off the wall in every single account. And that's a hard proposition to walk in and say, all right, this wader is the best wader in the market. And what I need from you is to take one of those slots on your wall and give it to us, and I'll prove that we'll perform there. I would say there's a lot of accounts that we're all in on that out of the gate, and we're still making that request to a lot of dealers out there and it's a hard proposition some days for some accounts. The whole idea here is that we need to be accretive to the business. We don't want to come in and divide anybody's revenue up by another skew. We need to show up, we need to perform, and we need to prove that our wader like resonates with the consumer and sells through. But yeah, I guess like at the end of the day, it truly was a dealer led initiative for us like where we were getting, the requests were loud enough and frequent enough that we decided to kick off like an R&D project in waders.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, that's super interesting. And as I hear you talk about that, I can certainly hear kind of the commercial fishing background of the company kind of coming through in the design philosophy about, you know, durability, value driven, because, I mean, these are blue collar guys out there making their money on crab boats, fishing boats, and if you can get them something that doesn't cost $2,000, that would be great, right?

Jim Kershaw: Yeah, I mean that's the plan. And to that point, from a design philosophy standpoint and harkening back our core is commercial fishing and we want to continue. We kind of run everything through this filter of sorts, and always ask the questions of why. Why is it important that Grundens has this perfect. Why are we making this? Why are we being asked for this? You know, we have to check ourselves often and to your point earlier, it's about failing fast, um, and making sure that we have something that we can be proud of and what we try to do as well is we think of it more of, It's not necessarily timeless, but creating product that we know is going to outlast and out preform and that's running everything through that filter, checking, not afraid to push it off, to Curtis's point earlier, and making sure that it checks the box of really being, uh, rugged and durable enough, but also approachable. I don't want to say it's easy to design the really high end, expensive stuff. You want a $2,000 wader? Sure, no problem. I can make that. It's the product that comes at that perfect balance of performance and value. That's the hard stuff. Um, I don't know if there's anything you want to add there, Curtis.

Curtis Graves: Yeah, a $1,500 wader would be a fun project. If we could go build spaceships with government money on it, that would be fun. But every single detail is considered around how much does it cost and I guess I’ve pushed the development team a lot around. There's a lot of great ideas, I guess just in a design process of any product, um, the question comes down, I mean, the question that we all kind of have to hold ourselves accountable to is like, does that add value for the customer? In a lot of ways, it's like a cool feature that's like, yeah, that's really innovative or very unique but is it something as angler, that I believe that the customer needs or is going to make the angling experience better or somehow help you catch more fish or stay out and fish in worse conditions? Um, and unless you can answer those questions, it's like that feature has to come out and it causes a great source of frustration with the team sometimes but I mean, I do think that, like, when you, when you get everybody pulling in the same direction around, hey, we’re building consumer centric products here and this is not art you hang on the wall. This is a functional piece of gear that you need to put on your body and go fish with. I think it really starts to resonate.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's funny you say that. I've got some stuff, if you could see to my left, I've got like my tying table and all my video stuff and you know I have a handful of products that I would say are solutions looking for problems.

Jim Kershaw: Mhm hm.

Marvin Cash: And it's like you're kind of cool, but like you look at it and you're like, gosh, I just don't understand the use case for this, you know?

Jim Kershaw: That happens often.
Martin Cash: Yeah. 

Curtis Graves: We're really prescriptive with that though. The briefs that I alluded to this morning were like, I owe Jim those this week. Um, Jim and I work closely together in identifying who the customer is.  When an idea goes into paper before we ever spend a single dollar on it other than our time. Um, but when an idea goes on paper, it's like who are we building this for? Um, what problem are we intending to solve and why does the customer need that from us? And that's the important one, because I don't want to go build products that exist in the market today because I know if I was a retailer holding my open to buy dollars back and if I've got whatever it is on the wall that's performing for me and putting money in my register, then I don't want to stop doing that and go do something else just because it says Grundens on it. I want this to be like every single product that we produce has to solve a problem or bring a unique value proposition to the buyer at a retail store and ultimately to the customer.

Marvin Cash: Very neat and you mentioned earlier that you were kind of waiting for kind of some pent up demand to embark on the wader project. How long did it take you to bring the boundary waders to market?

Curtis Graves: Well, I guess there was one day, and it was specifically mid-June of 2021, um, where we went from talking about making waders to making waders and it was really specific and it was a board meeting, and that's a point where folks at Jim and my level of the company actually get to interact with the guys that own the company and have real skin in the game through financial investment and senior leadership. They interact with those guys like daily, once a week, whatever. Um, we get these moments of board meetings that we're requested to show up, show what's in your pipeline, talk through the next like 18 months of innovation. And, um, I remember a very specific directive. It was like, hey, it's time to make a wader, guys. I had like 24 hours to go put a plan together on how much money we needed to kick off this project and it wasn't like starting from scratch, right, like I've been thinking about this for years. I knew kind of what we needed to do, we just kind of got green lighted on it. We got green lighted on it on a Tuesday and by Wednesday, we needed to have a really concrete, well thought out plan. So, uh, that was a long night. And, um, it came back the next day at the day three of the board meeting and presented a roadmap, a strategy and a plan and asked for more money than I thought we needed, um, because I didn't want to go back and ask twice and we kicked that project off and I would say within the next 60 days we had design firms engaged. This is prior to Jim working here, so I was kind of flying blind with a designer at the time. Uh, we had a design firm that made a lot of our apparel but, um, we wanted to go truly engage somebody that could get into the engineering side of, um, these laminates and, uh, the engineering side of like the design of waders and ultimately that wader projects the way that we were able to engage Jim. The right order of operations would have been like, hey, we know in six months we want to start a project, so we're going to go hire the right designer to join the team and, uh, we for sure we had carts pulling horses for a little bit there, but it all worked out great.

Marvin Cash: It's like I say, you build the car while you're driving it, right?

Jim Kershaw: Yeah.

Curtis Graves: Yeah. Well, this one's more like trying to fix an airplane while you're flying it, because if it crashes, it's way more of a…like there was no chance of failure because I knew that like the product team's credibility was on the line on this one and hard work gets rewarded with more hard work sometimes and that was the moment of like, hey, we've got to go get after this, and we got to get it right. We have one shot to launch these waders. We can't fail.

Marvin Cash: Yeah and it's interesting because I guess I first saw them, it would have been probably last June at, um, an event that Davidson River Outfitters had, right? And Bob Clowers was there and I'd known Jeff Furman for a thousand years because he'd been a guide, uh, with Kevin and, uh, really got a walkthrough and I think it's interesting because you can talk to a lot of people in the industry and you guys probably have this experience too, and you can tell who knows what time it is and who doesn't and like walking through what you differentiated in your product design was really impressive to me about thinking about the problems, and I thought it'd be interesting if you guys kind of walk through those, because I don't think everyone's had a chance. We're halfway through show season, so, people have gotten a better chance, right, to put their hands on the waders but there's just so many things, I don't know if Jim, you want to speak to this and I kind of you know, off the top of my head, I think about the repairability issue you know, I'm a big guy, right? I'm six three. Um, so mobility is awesome. The suspension systems amazing, the thought process and the gravel guards, all that stuff is awesome.

Jim Kershaw: Yeah, absolutely. Part of, I think, behind building this assortment in general in waders is really trying to future proof it. Um, our developer, Kristen Chandler, she did an amazing job, um, working on really getting that movement out of the waders , and we wanted to make sure that that translated throughout the whole assortment. So I'll kind of touch base on some of the DNA and then we can hop back to boundary, um, specific features. But to your point, we wanted to make sure that if you fit into a Boundary or a Vector or a Bedrock, that you're getting the same fit. I think that's something that can, um, get missed, um, with other brands in the market right now of just changing patterns, changing fit just a little bit, tweaking it here and there and you don't necessarily know what you're getting, um, between the previous wader that you had and the new one and so we focused big time on mobility, um, making sure that you can get in and out of boats, up and over logs, making sure that you didn't have any issues or binding, regardless of the material, laminate thickness. Um, the repairability is a huge one. You know, I guess we all know that within the industry, there's waders that leak and waders that don't leak yet. And, um, we really wanted to build this from a future proof standpoint to say hey, you know, we've got this repairability program based in Seattle and then also based in the Carolinas, and with the ability to kind of send it in for repair, um, whether that's a patch, um, let's say puncture your booties, that's a big one that we wanted to focus on is having modular Neoprene booties. Um, so we have this nice gusset down there that actually allows it to articulate on its own, reducing the stress along those seams, but it also allows those to be swapped out and really, the thought process behind that is to keep you on the water longer but also, a lot of times, you'll see that, let's say you get a hole in your booties or something happens to the Neoprene on the booties, and you get swapped out a wader . We want to make sure part of this whole initiative, too, of building durable product, and then also this sustainability aspect is just keep your gear out there. It should be a little bit more of a badge of honor. It’s interesting that it's not, you know you look at, let's say, climbing as an example or anything, outdoor, ski, snow and you get a patch on your jacket, and it's like, wow, that's cool, You really wore that thing. In fly fishing, it's not the case. It's like, oh, man, those are beat up, I need a brand new pair, and we have to shake that as a mindset within the industry and so, going off a little, I like tangents so I'm going a little off there but, um, repairability is important. We’ve partnered with some amazing, uh, Neoprene out of Japan, companies called Yamamoto. They’ve built some of the best triathlon suits, um, in the world and we work with them on this, um, titanium alpha Neoprene that kind of cascades throughout DNA. So, um, what that does is it helps regulate the temperature inside of your booty, keeping you warm, keeping the cold out by using two different titanium layers and so you've got warming Neoprene booties that solve a problem, right. Cold feet, they kind of suck. You go in there, you've got ice blocks, you're on the water less. We wanted to solve for repairability so we have that with different, not only how we launched this wader with, um, two different centers and the partner that we're working with there, but also through the repairability with the booties and how we're thinking about the construction from a suspenders standpoint, and then, um, mobility and those are three kind of DNA features that kind of cascade throughout all of it. Back to the boundary we also really wanted to focus on suspension and I'll actually let Curtis kind of hop in on this one but it was really inspired from a climbing harness construction and Curtis, you kind of lead the charge a little bit on the construction of that and how that kind of cascaded through.

Curtis Graves: Yeah, I guess the harness design, the suspension system design that we built in here, I mean I guess it came from my personal frustration with everything I'd ever fished in. Um, I thought there was an opportunity to really, to innovate in an area that was probably the most important point of contact with the body and beyond getting your pattern right, having mobility built into the way that the actual wader itself articulates, um, the one piece of this thing that you're in contact with all day and it really has consequences for how the wader fits your body, as well as how it fits with your layering system, your shell, and the fact that most anglers fish with some form of a pack, either backpack, sling pack, or even a lumbar packer slung over the shoulder. So, just really wanting to get kind of that part of it really right and it really saw it as, I guess that was the chance to really innovate beyond, Goretex does their innovation kind of really in a silo like  their R&D team, um, they give us a proven laminant, and there's no second guessing that but I think with our ability to the things that we could focus on in this to really make a massive difference around how the consumer perception of comfort was really going to be in the suspension system. Um, and it's also kind of in the belt loops where those are placed, um, it’s in a lot of the details of where those seams land on the body, um, are really around, there's a lot of, I guess, just like fit theory that went into the entire kind of top to bottom system there but yeah, we bought a couple of climbing harnesses and we cut them up to see kind of what was going on on the inside. Having worked around the harness world for a little bit, things had changed a lot in the last ten years and just really understanding how we thought that the climbing harnesses were being constructed at a factory. So it was like, let's take this apart to understand how they put it together and then try to replicate that, um, in a very opposite way. So like a climbing harness is very static. It's designed to hold your body weight in a fall. Um, we needed something that moved with you and be more dynamic. So, um, we flipped the script on a couple of materials that are on the interior of it  and really it was about like, hey, how can this thing be constructed essentially inside out and then turned into its final form and it was more of an exercise of trying to instruct a factory how to build something that they had never even seen before. Um, but yeah, I think we got it right in a lot of ways. Also, um, the ability to really place that suspension system four and aft, up and down on the body was really unique and, um, not something that had ever been solved for in a pair of bibs or waders or any kind of lower garment ever in the world.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's amazing because I know, uh, when you feel hunched over at the end of the day because you basically had like kind of traditional suspender straps yanking on you, um, it's an amazing thing and I would say too, from a thoughtfulness perspective, I was blown away at the Kevlar Gravel Guards, right? And the thought process about how that eliminates stress on one of the major leak points and where the wader joins the booty.

Curtis Graves: Well I guess to back, we were testing at Kevlar gravel guard early on. Um, it was so cost prohibitive that we couldn't pull it off. Um, and we actually found a way better material, um, in there. So, um, the stretch woven that's on our pocket as well as on our gravel guard material comes from a supplier that I've worked with for the better part of a decade. They're our best supplier that we work with because they're always willing to innovate for us and we threw the problem on the table of, hey, we want to take this stretch, we want to submerse it for eight to 10 hours a day and it's got to hold up against the following list of gremlins out there that are trying to take you down. And they kind of laughed for a moment and ran with it and we got a great material. And you know, on the testing side of things, uh, we use a Martindale as kind of an industry standard, um, test fixture. We use the Martindale and we use the taber to test a lot of, a tabers like a tiny record player that's abrasive and typically 25,000 cycles on a Martindale, it's kind of getting there. It's not quite what we need but it's at least a step in the right direction. We ran that gravel guard to 200,000 cycles and shut the machine off and said, I think we got a winner here. When you're at a list of five or eight textiles that you're trying to whittle down to two and you want to do an AB field test, um, you kind of have to fail fast in a lab, otherwise you're going to be field testing forever and you might miss something and to this day, our field test waders are still out there. You know, I think that's a unique thing. We've got a number of field test waders from that initial field test that are still going strong and asking a field tester to test to failure, um, especially when the new waders are already in the market, they're like, ah, when can I get one of those? I'm like, when you break the ones you got, you know, you can have them. So yeah, maybe I'm probably jumping into the test side of this thing too fast, but that's, I guess, a little more of the process behind the curtain.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, no, it's super neat and my understanding too is that material is a lot less grabby than Neoprene. So those days of wrestling with dropper hooks and things like that are maybe a little bit behind us.

Curtis Graves: Well, you can still snag a hook in it. Um, our head of sales got a steelhead hook, steelhead fly hooked in his and it turned out, uh, that thing might have had a barb on it. 

Marvin Cash: Ah..

Curtis Graves: No, I’m joking. I'm joking. He got a good snag out of it. I was like, hey, buddy, that's not a barbless hook. But he swore it was and I trust him, he's a good guy.  When we go through the field testing, a lot of that stuff shows up andI do agree, everybody in the world out there, I guess the two problems that I saw with gravel guards were, one was like, if you're a shell fabric and you hop out of the river, it's like a bucket on your ankles and it fills the drift boat up pretty quickly and by the end of the day, you got at least ten or 15 gallons of extra water floating around the bottom of the boat. Um, the other is like a Neoprene gravel guard is kind of the industry standard out there. So it's like, let's just not do that because that's what the world expects us to do and using that as an opportunity to innovate. I think what we gained out of this was a more snag resistant, a more pick resistant gravel guard. It’s not obviously impervious to like the world out there, but it's better than, I think, what you would expect from our peers out there. Um, and then secondly, it allows us to build it closer. We can build it closer to the boot so it's a better boot to welt interface and I think that helps just over the long haul, keep a lot of the river gunk and just sand out of your boots and the whole idea here is to give you long life use of your stocking feet.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely and I do know, you know saw, I think some of these at the shows, and I was actually talking to my buddy at TCO, and they're, I guess, on the cutting edge of getting some of the new wader lines and now you're coming out with the Vector and the Bedrock and I was wondering if you guys could kind of tell us a little bit about kind of what the design differences are between those two lines and, uh, the boundary.

Curtis Graves: Yeah, I'll let Jim take it because Jim, actually, Jim's first round of waders with us here, the first order of business was, go design three waders and I think it also just speaks, he's been here two years, and those waders are just hitting retail now. So that's kind of the runway to give you visibility into how long it takes to actually get something from an idea in a consumer's hand.

Jim Kershaw: Yeah, and I would say that was still a fast timeline. Real quick on that timeline element. We do vary, um, from a standard. It depends on how far out projects are, you know and if we're being asked, you know and if it's something that we can get there faster. It can take 24 months, it can take twelve months, it can take nine months, um, 18. It just depends. So the Vector and Bedrock waders for us you know, we really wanted to take a step back and think about if someone were familiar with the commercial fishing side of it, talking Bedrock initially, at first, sorry, Vecktor. Um, we wanted to approach it from the ingredients that make up the wader . Design, don't get me wrong, love design, um, but really, if you don't have a good base and a good foundation from the material and the laminate, and really how you create that, it doesn't really matter how many bells and whistles and whatnot you have. So we wanted to build something that was rugged and felt as if it were good enough to stand up on a commercial fishing boat, um, to give you that sense. So the Vector, what we did was we kind of created this unique laminate, um, that we're really proud of and is really special. It gives you this really supple, softer hand, but it's a very dense, puncture resistant, um, fabric. And so if you were to think of it maybe from a, let's just say, like an apparel standpoint, it's like buying that fresh pair of jeans versus having a worn pair of jeans and you're always going to go back to that worn. So we wanted to create this fabric package that felt like it was already broken in which a lot of times when you go with those heavier, more puncture, more abrasion resistant materials, they get really stiff fast and so, um, starting with that again, we wanted to bake in the same DNA. So we knew that, um, we wanted the warming neoprene, we wanted the repairability, we wanted the same fit, um, and then from there it was really trying to figure out what was the right level of feature benefit and not creating features or pockets or details that you don't necessarily need and that's kind of how we work from both, um, the bedrock and the Vector and a unique element of it is, I call them T-rex arms, but almost all of the, um, stocking foot waders out there have a horizontal zip to kind of access, you kind of have your dump pocket, but you go in and you're really looking at, all right, let me fish this out of the corner. Let me get that. Um, and you kind of can get stuff lost in there. It's a great way to do it. But we thought about it a little bit differently and said, hey, you're wearing a jacket, most jackets have a vertical zipper. Why not put a vertical zipper down the front? And in all honesty, it was pretty polarizing at first when we got it into the field testing, um, and it was like, whoa, what is this? This looks really strange. And as you know, the industry, as far as fly fishing goes, it does move relatively slow. So, um, it was a little polarizing, but the idea was that, hey, you have ambidextrous storage. You can go left, you can go right. You just have a straight vertical zip, you can store fly boxes, um, anything you need kind of in that center section and we wanted to create that as part of the DNA element and so, um, hand warming pockets, we've got adjustability, we took the suspension system from some of our sport fishing bibs and we implemented that. So again, you have this, we're thinking about suspension differently, um, from a Vector so make sure that it's comfortable and then we also have these really low profile, um, knee pads in there because it's kind of like wearing a zippered wader. Once you wear a wader with knee pads, you kind of don't really want to go back and it's really less about kneeling on gravel, um, and rocks and landing fish and it's also about getting in and out of boats and leaning up against a gunnel or something like that and really making sure that um, you've got that and we want our waders , I think in general Vector and Bedrock. And I'll touch on Bedrock real quick. The idea is that these transcend beyond just fly fishing too. You know, I think that's one of the elements that makes, um, our brand unique. And so we want to make sure that it's not just built for a river, um, and it's not just built for fly fishing. And so the Bedrock carries all of that same DNA but does it in uh, a really tried and true four layer laminate, um, as well and it doesn't have the, I would say it's a great blend of the mobility, the comfort and the um, breathability that you might find from the Gore and having a little bit of that shared ruggedness from the Vector and creating this really great value proposition and really the Bedrocks the first handshake for us in viewing the product in that way of saying hey, if someone's new to the brand, they want to try us, they don't necessarily want to invest in these different tiers or maybe they're not as rugged or they don't want the premium features that show up in the Goretex, then this has to perform. It has to be good on fleets, it has to be good for rentals. Um, you know, it's the wader that shows up at a lodge and you've got 15 of them on the wall and it's just for people to wear if they don't bring it. Um, and we approach it that way. So similar kind of features as far as storage pockets go. Not as water resistant from a storage pocket standpoint and no um, knee pads so it's a different type of use case, um, where the Vector is really built for guides and rugged briar busting I don't care about what I'm wearing and then the Bedrock is really built for um, more of an all around approach to angling and um, helping that. Let's just say like more of a weekend warrior or a you know, yeah, I'd say weekend warriors is probably a good one. What do you think, Curtis, for Bedrock? I mean it’s really, it's a great wader.

Curtis Graves:  At these fly shows that we've been pitting recently, I've been positioning that as a ten day a year angler. I think there's a lot of people out there that really appreciate good gear. They have a million other hobbies, right? Like they might be playing golf. They might be surfing, whatever it is but fly fishing is something that they've just gotten into or they do it when they take their annual trip to Montana, or they do it when they get together with family on a week at the lake or whatever. We wanted to kind of make the range approachable. So obviously yeah, It's built for hardcore use, but the total number of days that you’ll get out of a bedrock relative to a Vector. Vectors built to be the 200 a year day guide, um, the ultimate endurability. We also take that Vector Chassis and we build a special model for rental fleets as well. Our primary customer that does the rental is a lot of Alaska lodges, really will dive into a rental wader program because I think a lot of people look at like, hey, I want to go to Alaska to fish and they may be a great fly angler, they may kind of just have gotten into it and they don't have the gear and they've left the box store with their $129 pair of waders or they've got an old pair of Neoprene waders that they think work great until you get to kind of the hardest environment on earth to go wade in and Alaska, rivers are brutal. It's a different frontier up there of what you need to bring to the party if you're going to have a successful week at a lodge up there. Um, so yeah, we've had a lot of, uh, interest in a rental program from us and I think retail shops are going to slowly get on board with that as well, of like, hey, we can offer a really great experience for somebody that's coming to spend a day with us on a guided trip. I think a lot of people just show up with old gear and it's like, hey, today's a great day to try something new and you're going to get better at casting, you're going to get better at fishing and you might as well have a great experience doing it. 

Marvin Cash: Yeah. I think the great thing too, not just for waders , but is to have the gear get out of the way, right? Just like let you fish and not have a bad day because you're in swampy neoprenes or you've got old gear or to be perfectly honest, I would love to just know that places that I wanted to travel to, to fish had it so I didn't have to pack it and keep it up and spread it out and dry it all out when I got home.

Curtis Graves: There's nothing worse than flying home with wet waders and boots. You have a great week but then you finish, you ultimately want to get that last morning in before you have to leave and you always end up packing a wet pair of waders in a bag and everything's really gross when you get home. But maybe that's the defining moment of a trip of, like, I got every minute out of this that I could.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I always take several, uh, black trash bags with me for exactly that purpose.

Jim Kershaw: There you go. And real quick on, I guess, our ethos and design really behind that, and our, uh, products in general. A lot of people plan for the worst, but we build for the worst, and that's really the approach and how we filter it through and those waders are a good example of the evolution of that.

Marvin Cash: And I would say, too, looking at your products and talking to some of the guys in the booth in Denver, I can see the same thoughtfulness in the design process in your rain gear and your wading boots and I was wondering if you guys wanted to kind of talk about a little bit of that, because I thought some of that stuff was incredibly neat, like the thought around the double flaps on the zippers and things like that so that, um, it just shows kind of an understanding of what the elements will do and how they create problems for you when you're on the water.

Jim Kershaw: Yeah, absolutely. Curtis, why don't you take that one?
Curtis Graves: Okay. 
Jim Kershaw: I think you'll have a good bit to add there.

Curtis Graves: Yeah. So the double storm flap. I guess it's been somewhat of a non-negotiable design feature for us on outerwear. I guess it dates all the way back to the fact that our commercial jackets, the brig jacket, has been around since the sixties and it's had a double storm flap on it since then and the belief is that, our belief personally from, not just making this up, but from testing, is that the only way to really keep somebody dry on the inside is to have a storm flap over a zipper. If you're standing in a river and it's raining, you can get away with an exposed zipper. You're never going to notice the difference but when you take this thing kind of to the next level and you're running in an open console boat for our Goretex outerwear line, um, if you're a guide running in a jet sled in BC, Canada, or anywhere that it's raining hard and you've got motor driven rain, you're going to get wet through that zipper. So, we take the design approach of saying our ‘have to have’ in this jacket is a storm flap and then let's just do that in a very elegant way so it doesn't get in the way, it's easy to access in and out of, and you might not even know it's there. The only thing you'll know is that you're not wet. Um, and then with the boot program, I guess we just saw the insanity in the wading boot world like the leapfrogging of technology and price points that was going on was kind of getting out of hand, and you sit around and you’re like, where do we want to be and how do we want to define this brand within wading? I guess the way I thought through it from a, hey, what are we going to build here? Is like, metal hardware was a ‘have to have’. There was going to be no chance plastic hardware was going to make it anywhere in the wading boot line but it had to be corrosion resistant and then, um, we just wanted to build a really well reinforced, classic leather boot and leather presents a set of problems in the river. Like, old school leather boots shrink, and even leather boots from ten years ago shrink. Um, so we went through the process of identifying a waterproof leather, um, that could be submerged in water and go through wet, dry cycles you know, throughout the life of the boot and not give you, uh, an experience of where that boot is going to shrink on you or you have to like oversize the boot with the whole idea that the first time you wear it, it's going to shrink up on you and then we partner with Vibram on the kind of midsole and outsole chassis, like the lower unit on that boot is all Vibram and we designed it to accept our Hexagrip Stud and Cleat pack. So, it would basically just give you one solution to completely stud that boot out for traction on slippery rivers. Yeah you know, I think if you get a chance to look at our wading boot, you'll notice that it's got a lot of like burly rubber overlays on there that come out of kind of the mountaineering and climbing world. The leather on it is really nice, like we overinvested in leather on there just to make sure you would have a good quality new buck that holds up for the life of the boot and, um, even going as far as taking all the hardware and embedding those on the, basically, the hardware attachment points are all internal in the boot so there's not rivets or attachment points like on the inside of the boot that wears through your stocking foot faster. So, yeah, thoughtful design, for sure, on kind of how that executed and I think the other thing is like we really tuned the way that boot flexes in the water. So not trying to build a replica of what already existed in the market from a very almost Herman Munster boot, if you will. Yeah, the flex profile is really well engineered into it  so the feedback that I've gotten, um, from a lot of dealers and a lot of testers on it is, it's the most comfortable boot to wade in because of the way that we engineer the ball break of the foot and, um, engineering proprioception, which is basically your brain's ability to feel kind of what's under your foot in the river and it kind of just helps to drive just the natural balancing process that your body does.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it sounds like it would make for a better wading experience I mean because at least for me, like I mean, I'm a big guy, so I wear a size 13, right? So I feel like I'm Frankenstein when I'm in the water and I don't always feel like I have a really, like It's not that I'm not in contact, but I don't feel like my feet are seeing like they would normally see if I was wearing another type of shoe and I wasn't in the water.

Jim Kershaw: Yeah, yeah.

Curtis Graves: We need to get you a pair to test. It would be interesting to do a follow up to this podcast of like, wear our waders and boots for another, wear them for a season, and like at the end of the summer come back and do a follow up.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it would be cool. It's funny, too, because I was talking to your guys in Denver, about whether I'm an XL or an XL King because of the way your suspension system works and had a long kind of philosophical conversation about, like, I layer on top of my waders because I want to capture that heat.

Jim Kershaw: Right.

Marvin Cash: I also don't want rain. People can do whatever they want to, but I've never understood why you would wear a rain jacket underneath your wader so that you were just catching all that water and letting it run down into your clothes, but just trying to kind of calibrate that out and think about, like, I fish anywhere from trout in the Carolinas, which both of you guys know is not like a super cold water jam, except for maybe two weeks in February, you know up to steelhead fishing, which is the coldest I ever am in my entire life, so. 

Curtis Graves: Yeah, and we’re closer to the steelhead, I guess, world because that's home base for us out in the Pacific Northwest and for better or worse, our testing gets, you know a lot of the testing gets done out on the Olympic Peninsula. I got a great picture of Jim wearing a jacket that's coming out next year and, um, you want it to fail on the like internal team first before it even makes it to a field tester, so like he had a pretty rough day with a leaky jacket that we had a lot of learnings out there, but it was raining like two inches an hour and for sure, one of the rainiest days I've ever been through on the OP and there's just not enough pair, you don't have enough gloves in your backpack to make it through the day, and you're just like, constantly rotating from the wet gloves to the less wet gloves that are somewhere in the bottom of the pack and you get to the end of the day and you're like, Jim takes his jacket off and he's like, wow, look at this, got stipes. And we ended up making like an immediate design change that before these things even made it to a sample that a rep gets and something that we do kind of advanced field testing but those learnings are fun. I enjoy, especially when I'm the one that's not getting wet and the designer is.

Jim Kershaw: Yeah, that was a good one. Um, and I mean to that point, it's failing fast, right? It's like, hey, we just got this prototype in. Let's go get it on the water. It was a Monsoon. Um, and you know within ten minutes, I'm like, ope, well, this sucks. I've got another 6 hours of this, but we'll figure it out, but glad we found out.

Curtis Graves: It's not an exaggeration. It rained twelve inches of water that day out there. Until you experience it, you can't even comprehend, because it almost sounds like a tall tale.

Jim Kershaw or Cash: Yeah.

Marvin Cash: But the amazing thing is, Curtis, it sounds like you and I are maybe roughly the same vintage. You know, when I was coming through scouting in Virginia, like there was no Gore-Tex, right?

Curtis Graves: The military had it, but you for sure didn't have it as a scout.

Marvin Cash: I mean, yeah the doctor's kids didn't even have it, right? So, like, it didn't exist and the idea of having those super heavy hiking boots that you put the Snow-Bee water sealant on and uh, back then, the Boy Scout way was to wear a pair of tube socks with a wool sock on top. Like my boys complain now, I was like, guys, you just have no idea how much better the materials and the gear are today than they were 40, 50 years ago.

Jim Kershaw: Oh, yeah.

Curtis Graves: I vividly remember going to like a camperrey out on the, it was in Virginia Beach, and it was out on, like, I want to say it was like Fort Story kind of out, like on the north end of Virginia Beach, like, we drove up for that and it was a, those scout days were a miserable camp experience. I feel bad for anybody that didn't like, there's probably a ton of kids that just never went camping because their experience in scouting, um, with mediocre gear was just like, wow, this sucks, but I made the commitment to my family. It was like, we're going to have great gear, we're going to have a good time, and we're going to over invest in making sure everybody's warm, and dry, and comfortable when we're on the river. I think it's made a big difference from, I've got three boys between the youngest turned eight today and the oldest is 14 and they don't know what it's like to go through, um, a rough night of camp in a cotton filled sleeping bag and being wet and cold because they've always had great gear and maybe I'm starting to sound like a curmudgeon now, you kids don't know what it’s like…but I just don't want them to have to go through that because I want the outdoors to be such a good experience for them. It's something that they fall in love with and they want to do, um, with their kids down the road, and I guess maybe it's also selfish, that I just don't want to hear them complain.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. There you go. One of the interesting things, is you know, obviously Grundens has moved into fly fishing but I would say probably one of the interesting opportunities is your fly anglers have become aware of all the other products that were in the Grundins universe and I was kind of curious you know, what are the favorite kind of traditional Grundens products that have made their way into the hands of fly fishermen, they seem to really like and buy a lot?

Curtis Graves: Well, I think the notion of the fly angler, it's somewhat manufactured by the industry, and I'll go down the road of like, because I think everybody, granted, I do get there's people that are fly only, like dry fly or die guys out there. I salute you. Um, but I think the majority of the people out there are anglers first, and they've found a love of fly fishing because of its challenge or because of the unique kind of,  you've arrived at a level of angling by fly fishing because it's going to test your skill as angler but ultimately, I think everybody, if presented with the opportunity to go catch and harvest fish, um, they're going to do that and I think the opportunity to say, hey, we're going to go on a tuna trip or we're going to be in Alaska, we're going to go harvest halibut, because I love to eat halibut and I'm up here and I get to fly home with like a hundred pounds of fish and it's gonna be amazing. Um, so I do think that catch and consume angler, um, out there is really our core customer in a lot of way and that same person, they may be swinging a barbarous hook on a tube fly for steelhead one weekend and also out trolling for salmon in the Columbia River. We had an internal joke of knowing when to bonk them and it's like when to keep a fish wet and to treat it like it's like a revered species of like, hey, we got to let this guy go and not hurt it at all because it's got to go spawn, it's got to go make baby fish so we can continue the cycle and then when it's like, hey, there's an abundance of food fish here, unless this fresh salmon is going to provide protein for the family, this one's going to the table, boys. Um, I guess I digress a little bit there. Um, I do think that a lot of our PU and PVC is kind of how we got into sport fishing. Um, if you need blood and guts, impervious material, rubber pants are the only way to get it and it's 100% stain proof. The world's been talking a lot about PFAS in the last 18 months, and it's going to talk even more about it in the next 12 and the next 24. Um, we are the original kind of PFAS free brand, um, with our PVC and PU coated materials. They've never had PFAS in them and also they don't rely on PFAS to keep for water beading performance. So that's a unique thing. Building gear that really is hose down rinsable and allow you to go and process a fish or catch a nasty fish or actually use live bait. It'll make your fancy bibs really gross really quick. So we have both, we have the really nice Goretex for you. We also have the really basic, uh, PU coded stuff for you. Um, and I think beyond like I would say, that world, our Tough Sun solar series that's launching here. It'll actually be available in ten days, has been the best pre-booked solar program that we have. It's UPF 50. You can get about five days out of it on the river without it starting to stink because of some performance finishing we use. It's the only sunshirt on the market with a 100%, no questions asked lifetime guarantee because we believe in the durability, so much on it. So, um, yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there that's adjacent to our fly category that really resonates kind of on that next ring out of anglers that really are the broader community that we want to like, speak to.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and I really like your deck boots, right?

Curtis Graves: Totally forgot deck boots. Yeah. And you're absolutely right. I probably should have led with deck boots because that is the one. I mean, I think deck boots are, deck boots have become in vogue in a lot of ways. A lot of people just wear deck boots these days and I'll see them in the city a lot of like, wow, we somehow found that customer right there and they would have never found us any other way other than searching for rubber ankle boots and when you get to the details of why we beat the competition, it turns into a sale. But we do sell a lot of boots, like our boot business is, it started like five years ago. It was a tiny piece of the business. It's grown to a significant business unit and would be a standalone business or brand on its own from the volume of boots that we do and it's pretty rad to see, like I'm just happy because I know that every person that buys a boot from us is going to have a better day on the water.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, that end of the day solution to me is always something I'm always trying to figure out. When you're in the parking lot in Montana and you want to go and what's the quickest, fastest way and all that sort of stuff and so love the boots. I've tried all kinds of different solutions around that and, um, it's great to just be able to, uh, it's important to get off the water and start drinking beer as quickly as possible, right?

Jim Kershaw: There you go. Boat to bar.

Curtis Graves: Boat to bar. Well, I think, do you ever fish the Madison river?

Jim Kershaw: I do.

Curtis Graves: Well, we actually have a new, um. Well, I don't want to let the cat out of the bag yet. I'm going to park that at that. There's a product name and, uh, I'm over sharing, so I'll stop at that.

Marvin Cash: Fair enough. But I'll make another pass at you. You've got sunshirts coming out here in the next ten days. Any other things in your development pipeline you want to share with our listeners before I let you guys go?

Curtis Graves: Yeah, um, we have a series of rainwear fly jackets that integrate with the waders really well. So, the jacket is called the Portal. It’s a portal because you can pass through to the next level of warmth, achieve a higher level of comfort out there, but it also allows you like access. The whole idea is this jacket is Gore. It's got the dunkable cuffs from our Buoy X line. We learned a lot of things with the Gambler Project for the professional bass anglers, and we kind of married the two of those up in a way that just really, uh, we took kind of the best of both of those jackets and we built a perfect jacket for somebody that's in the river. So 100% waterproof. You'll get our tried and true storm flap system, but then there's a pass through pocket inside the hand warmer pocket to keep your hands warm and this was specifically what leaked on Jim last year, twelve months ago. Getting that right was really detailed around drainage, and the right zipper in there, and the right zipper angle for diverting water away and with all of our Gore jackets, we send them to the rain room for an extreme and extended wet weather test. So they have to pass a standard of 22 inches an hour. It's something that like hunt and fish from Gore have to, like we have a higher level of test parameters than, say, an outdoor or snow sport company hits. So we hit the extreme and extended water, um, the rain room test on everything that we produce as Gore-Tex. We learn a lot along the way. They're a massive development partner for us. To be able to walk out of a co-development between Grundans and Gore-Tex and say, you know, this jacket's guaranteed to keep you dry for the life of the garment. That's a powerful statement to tell a consumer and we're really putting our money kind of where our mouth is on it but I'm comfortable saying that because I know the work that goes into the design and development of the details and the nuance of the tiniest detail on that jacket is scrutinized.

Jim Kershaw: Yeah, absolutely. I'll throw in there. We've got a good mid-layer coming in hot as well. 

Curtis Graves: Yeah, yeah. 

Jim Karshaw: Good system coming in. Probably more obviously within the fall timeline, but you can expect that and it's just a great layering piece, layering system that will keep you warm and comfortable without getting too bulky. You know, that coupled with the Portal is a great day on the water.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, yeah. Very, very neat. It's funny you say that because I have um, one of my favorite pieces is actually an REI down vest, but if you get wet, you're kind of screwed, so. 

Jim Kershaw: Oh yeah. 

Marvin Cash: You know, good to see that there's some options coming out and I guess, you know, we're probably roughly depending on where you are about halfway through show season. Curtis, are you guys going to be kind of still, uh, racking up the frequent flower miles hitting the shows as we kind of come into the home stretch of March?

Curtis Graves: Yeah, it's been really fun. Like we have been trying to divide and conquer as a team not only from a, not to try to grind any one of us to a pulp throughout like January, February, March, but also just to give other teammates the ability to go and interact with consumers because I think that those shows, the reason that we're there, I think, uh, uh, if you're showing up there as a brand to try to push a product to a customer, you're there for the wrong reason and my whole hearted belief is like, we're there to talk to our customer and to learn, um, and we do that through obviously like what looks like a retail environment but it's pretty interesting. We don't transact at that show. We don't sell a single thing. We give away stickers, we give away hats, we give away advice and we're happy to like kind of partner with dealers there. So like you mentioned, like TCO. Like TCO is a great partner up at the Edison Show. You know, in Denver, we had Blue Quill, we had Eds that were both selling waders. In the Atlanta show, I didn't personally make the Atlanta show, but Kristen, our wader developer did, along with our sales crew and Fishhawk, Alpharetta and Davidson all had booths there and they were all selling waders. It's great to see how, I also love the fact that like you've got everybody in one room and you get a really, as a consumer, when you go to these fly shows, they're super valuable because if I was going to go buy a wader, I want to be able to go hit everybody and understand who's going to support me as a customer, who's going to support me as if I'm walking up to you with $900 to spend on a pair of waders. That's a lot of money. We're all fairly advanced in our careers, and, uh, none of us are wealthy, but none of us are like, we're not, we're not struggling anymore at this point in our lives but a $900 purchase is a lot for me, and it's considered, and it's something that I'm going to go to, like I'm going to do my research, and I want to know what I'm getting, and I want to know the company is going to stand behind me as a customer. And we show up to these shows to really say, hey, we're new to this. I know you may not know who we are, um, or you may think of us as the orange bib brand out there, but it was a really impactful consumer interaction. I mean, there are hundreds of customers I talked to personally and kind of went through this whole process that we've gone through here in the last hour or so around why we do what we do and how we do it differently and then I think the feedback that I've gotten from our dealers is like, they're really appreciating the effort that we put forth at those shows so. Those shows will be a big part of our strategy going forward. I think it's a chance to engage your customer at a ‘one on one’ conversation and learn something you know? And I think like the moment you stop learning in this job, um, the moment that you're either growing or you're dying and like we're here as an entire organization to go to listen to customers.

Marvin Cash: Yeah. I would tell you from a consumer perspective, and, I mean, I know I live in a weird place as a fly fishing consumer because I've done other stuff in the industry, but it's very compelling to me when you see a new brand and you talk to someone and it's not like, hey, this is our high end, medium end, and low end wader. This, this, and this. It's like, here are the problems we solved, and let me show you, and this is like, I see you, this is your size, like, you would be an XL King or maybe an XL, it depends and you literally walk through all these features, and you're like, for me, as a consumer, you take that away and you're like, holy shit. These guys have like really thought about this a lot, right? And I think to make that investment, that makes it a whole lot easier, at least from my perspective, when you have that kind of interaction and feedback.

Curtis Graves: That was what we're going for. You know, I think it wasn't accidental to show up there kind of with that approach to waders. We've got a great, Ben, our VP Of Sales, and I work really closely together all in on the marketing side of things. We all were really well aligned going into this thing around like supporting retail, engaging consumers, giving away a hat and it's hard to put, you know, It's pretty interesting, too, in the digital world the marketing is very different these days. In the digital world, you spend a lot of money to engage a customer, and you can spend between $6 and $8 to have somebody land on your website for 90 seconds, maybe and the return on investment on that spend, obviously, there's guys that’s full time job is to track those metrics and return on ad spend, return on investment of digital activations and things like that. You know our approach on this one was like, hey, let's just go analog, and, um, let's give a hat away and that hat is going to cost us roughly $6 and that's less than what I would pay to engage a customer as a brand, to get somebody to go to our website and spend whatever amount of time they're going to spend there. And I think in the long run, it's going to pay off from a, like yeah, the Cappy Hour process that's going on across the country is a massive spend for us but at the end of the day, I think it's going to be the, you have a qualified customer that's standing at your booth and they're interested in who you are and what you do, and there's no better way to take somebody for 30 seconds while that press cooks and say, this is what we do. We're anglers, you're angler, too and this is why we do the things that we do and it's for sure the long run investment for us like in those shows.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's funny you say that because I think, and we could do an entirely different show. So I will stop after I say this, I think that analog approach and kind of this new AI digital noise world is going to become more and more powerful.

Jim Kershaw: Absolutely. It's the human element, right? It's like, let's be humans and let's talk.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, and it's kind of crazy, but I think that's going to be the superpower, right?

Curtis Graves: Well, I mean, digital devices are the new smoking, and I think we're going to see the consumer recoil back from that. It may take five years, it may take ten years. I already see it with my kids, you know, like just the anti-social media that the younger generation is engaging in. If you're building a brand around social media engagement like right now, today, you better be figuring something out for the future or else you’re going, from my seat, I think that's the losing battle over the long haul. It's paying dividends now, but, um, if you're trying to set this thing up for long haul, it's really these kind of moments that matter with the customer and if we could have poured beers at those shows, we would have. I think that you're a little bit handcuffed with the, like with the exhibition center there, wants to sell you a $9 beer and if we could have given away a beer and a hat, I think that that's, like, the kind of the most core that an angler, like what angler doesn't need a beer or a hat? And both of those things kind of go hand in hand with fishing.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, absolutely. We'll put this to the side. Maybe I have to do a marketing or a digital media series. We can come back and talk about some of this stuff, because it's one of my obsessions in podcasting about how to be authentic and respect your listeners, and I think it flows through with whatever you're selling, right? And I'm kind of a weirdo, so I'm a Gen X-er, so I live in a world where I love technology, but I didn't have it around all the time, and so I have a very different kind of thought process around it, and Curtis, to your point, it's interesting watching my kids navigate this, and you know, I've literally seen them when they were little, sitting on a sofa, texting with the person that was sitting next to them and I was like, guys, this is crazy, right?

Curtis Graves: Mine are a little younger. My oldest is 14 but there is a time where they all sit in the corner of a room together, playing Minecraft together on separate tablets, but face to.. I'm like, guys. I guess for me, it was Battleship, right? Like, when you got electronic Battleship, that was the moment you had arrived as a gamer in the 80s.

Marvin Cash: Yeah well, that's even before you get to old school Dungeons And Dragons but we could talk about, like, Risk and Stratego.

Jim Kershaw: Oh, yeah. Stratego. Oh man, sign me up. 

Marvin Cash: And Monopoly but I'll pull us back from dropping into this rat hole. Um, maybe we can continue the conversation some other time. You know, guys, what's the best way to check Show Circuit? You guys are going to be, I'm sure, doing the rest of the Frensky Shows. I would imagine you might be at some regional shows as well. You know, what's the best way, in addition to that, for people to kind of follow what's going on at Grundens and kind of stay in the loop?

Curtis Graves: Well, I'm a big advocate that our retailers are the best way to find out what we're doing and I say that, and I probably will get called out for the statement but I do think that a brand's digital reach as a retailer only goes so far, and especially in equipment. When it comes to fishing, um, I think like, fly shops are the core of the community in this market. If I want to go buy a new rod,  I think you've got to walk into a fly shop. You got to be able to cast it and I think there's no difference for like trying on gear or trying on a pair of waders. The fit of a wader is such a nuanced like, It's like the nicest suit you own in your closet. I don't own a suit that's $900. I mean have a blazer, that's kind of like the extent of it but I do think that the level of service that you get out of walking into a shop to try something on and be able to experience that, and then just to be able to get the knowledge of where to go fish as an angler, the fly shop is still the cornerstone, and I think it's what makes fly fishing so unique is the reliance on brick and mortar retail. We have a dealer locator on our website to enable you to go find our waders you know, if your listeners are primarily southeast based You know, the Atlanta market would be Fishhawk, Alpharetta, Davidson River, kind of up in the Asheville, Pisgah area. Those guys have bought into our program deeply and I would encourage you guys to go spend time, to go at that shop, because they're all really good people. In my experience there, too, is just like, even as a vendor to those guys. I was at that Davidson River event, and we're talking to customers there, but the next day, Kevin Howells’ was like, hey, man, go fish our water, you should go check it out. And just the ability to go and give you, like they have such special experiences that are attached there that if you go and pay their day fee, go fish their water. It's a really beautiful piece of water that flows through Pisgah, and those kind of things are really amazing to me, it’s like you don't really get that in the large box experience of fishing.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, Kevin does a phenomenally good job, and I think his private water is awesome and it's not like some of the zoo water in north Georgia and then I would say my insider secret when I go over there, fish is, you owe it to yourself to go to the Sierra Nevada Brewery and sit outside and enjoy some beers and some food. That's a really cool way to do it.

Jim Kershaw: That’s a really great spot.

Curtis Graves: We might have done that three or four times on that trip. It is pretty cool though, because they do have beers that you can't get. Sierra Nevada is like, kind of nationwide now.  I was really impressed with, I live in Bend, Oregon. We're like, kind of west coast beer capital out here. I was super impressed with how Asheville has kind of grown up since I was going there in college to mountain bike a lot. Um, the beer culture is so unique and so good. Like if I had to pick a city to live in on the east coast, it would be hands down Asheville in a minute. Um, if I told my wife we're moving to Baltimore, um, I'm probably quickly getting served divorce papers but Asheville, I think, is a really rad town and we went through there with family this past summer and she was like, wow, I can't believe how cool this place is now and it's got a vibrant restaurant scene. Maybe I'm sounding like I'm pitching Asheville more than my waders but it is a really cool place and I think it's like, if you're angler and you live on the west coast, it's worth a trip out there because I think it's such a unique fisheryand take the three weight and go fish dries on some brook trout water or if you go on Kevin's water, you better be packing a six weight. There's some Bruisers in there. 

Marvin Cash: Yeah. Good small mouth and good muskie too. I would also say this will be my last Asheville pitch. Um, another thing to do is, uh, if you like live music, if you can do fly fishing, a show with the Orange Peel, and you can eat dinner before at, uh, Wicked Weed, which is just across the street. That's a pretty good way to spend a few days, too.

Jim Kershaw: Oh, yeah.

Curtis Graves: Wicked Weeds beers are amazing. That was probably one of the more impressive breweries I walked into. Just like good food, kid friendly, great beer.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, I think we've got that figured out and I know, uh, we've kind of dissed a little bit on social media, but I would imagine that you probably do, you can throw out your URL, I'll drop it in the show notes, but I would imagine you're probably on Instagram and a few other places, too.

Curtis Graves: Yup. I mean, my name is Curtis Graves. Like at Curtis Graves on Insta and Grudens, we do have a social presence, I mean, I guess, I see it as more about inspiration, inspiring people. Our brand is about inspiring people to go fish and providing kind of updates to folks on new product intros. We obviously run a business like direct to consumer, too. But when you said the best place to try on waders, I do think that the regional, your local fly shop is the spot of, you're going to get the best fitting experience. You're going to have somebody to, um, when there's a problem, you've got an accountable person to go back to and say, hey, and we're here. Like, we obviously have a really robust warranty program. Um, our warranty center is not far from Asheville. It's in Old Fort. Pretty unique, uh, for another show but the investment that's going into American made textiles and American made cut and sew apparel, again at Old Forts really, really interesting. The state of North Carolina and the city of Old Fort have put a lot of dollars behind trying to bring back kind of the craftsmanship of apparel they’ve been making in America there and it's getting off the ground but I would speculate in the next five to ten years, Old Forts going to be a household name within the outdoor industry.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, which is very neat and for listeners that don't know you know, in addition to having a vibrant furniture industry, uh, North Carolina has been known for having a very, very strong textile industry, which obviously has really suffered with globalization but to your point, uh, people have either been trying to resuscitate the industry or repurpose the buildings and the facilities. So that's kind of an interesting part of, uh, the Tarhill state.

Curtis Graves: Yeah, NC states got the, North Carolina state has the best, hands down, the best textile, um, continuing education, undergraduate and bachelor's degrees or rather master's degrees in textile engineering. Some of the best people in the industry that I know that are at the top of their game in textiles have, um, either gotten a degree from NC state or have gone back for continuing education programs and it's sponsored heavy by Cotton Incorporated, you know a lot of dollars. It takes philanthropy to have a program like what those guys have and Cotton Inc. has done a really good job of supporting them but they do get out into technical textiles as well and myself, our materials team, materials team at competitors that we've talked about all have spent time at those, kind of in continuing education courses there and it's really cool to walk into a class as a competitor and not know who's going to show up and there's a person from Black Diamond there, there's a person from Sims that's across the table from you and you go through this as, you know like you realize at the end of the day that none of us have this figured out, right? Like, we're all constantly learning, um, uh, what's happening and how to get an edge up on the competition through material science and the best way to do that is, go educate yourself. It’s pretty rad. It's a very small industry.

Marvin Cash: Yeah, it's the niche of the niche of the niche and you know guys, I really appreciate you taking some time out of your work day. And Curtis, I super appreciate you getting online with me at 08:00 in the morning, kids or no kids. Um, I appreciate it and I've been really looking forward to this interview for a while. And you know, look forward to our paths crossing, uh, at shows and hopefully on the water sometime soon. Have a great rest of your day. And, um, tight lines.

Jim Kershaw: Absolutely. You too.

Curtis Graves: Thanks, Marvin. Thank you for having us on.

Marvin Cash: Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend and please subscribe and leave us a rating review in the podcatcher of your choice. And don't forget to head over to www.nor-vice.com to check out Norrvice's show schedule and all of their great products. Tight lines, everybody.