Oak Drive Monthly Update - April

You’re reading Oak Drive’s Monthly Update — a newsletter about me and my brother building a clothing brand from scratch. Each issue shares honest updates, real thoughts, and the actual numbers behind creating something high-quality and sustainable.

No playbook. No overnight success. Just two brothers trying to do it right — one misstep at a time.

Let’s get into it.

— Nick

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If you haven’t, give your fingers a workout and smash that follow button.

But here’s the April update. We’ve been busy. Some of it productive, some of it… less so, but we’re inching closer to Valhalla.

Now that Nick is officially one of those guys that looks like he let his girlfriend play dress up on him (no offense CC), he’s gotten super into sweaters. We’ve been working with two manufacturers in Peru and the dichotomy between them is stark. One responds within minutes. The other feels like we’re sending messages into the void never to be looked at.

With the former, we’ve sampled a range of materials—alpaca, cotton, and a few blends. Landed on a 85/15 cotton-alpaca blend we both liked right away. Good weight, great hand feel, exactly what we were going for

One problem - they “can’t” offer organic right now.

“Organic production is not feasible at this time. The factory is currently not accepting new developments due to a shortage of organic cotton on their end”

Great.

The apple apparently doesn’t fall too far from the tree, as we weren’t going to take no as an answer, a classic Mark Austin move. Instead, we suggested that if they want our business, they find another way.

Surprise, surprise, they found another mill. That being said, they did warn us the hand feel will be a bit different so we’re getting more samples. We’re somewhat skeptical, but cotton is cotton right? …famous last words.

Shirts are in production and should be arriving soon. Feels like this has been the case forever but we’re ready to actually start showing product, which feels like a big step up from talking about it.

Which brings us to product images.

We are not good at taking them, in fact, we’re horrible. Last summer I spent like 2 hours trying to have a photoshoot of our hats…not good.

We’ve talked to a few local photographers. They’re all very good, very professional, very expensive. We’ll need to make a decision here.

We finalized our hang tag design and it looks pretty sweet. We ended up going simple—single color, debossed. It looks clean and should feel premium (trusting Nick on this, he got the samples)

We’ve moved on from our original manufacturer and are now testing with a few others:

· Two in China (sampling both a high-rise cap and a dad hat)

· One in France (early, but promising)

Same general designs, but we’re focused on dialing in fit and structure. The dad hat is trending in the right direction. The high-rise is… a work in progress. It’s hard to put into words how exasperating it is to deal with the folks in China. Super responsive, but it’s just never easy.

Here’s what it’s like:

We’re getting closer, but not close enough yet.

Johnny posted a few videos. It turns out making something that doesn’t look terrible takes time.

Emphasis on a few videos - Nick

Nick had a strong run posting daily. Recently… less strong. I will need to see more commitment out of him…didn’t even get halfway…smh

We’ll keep at it. It’s way harder than it looks.

Current Score:
Nick: 34 Johnny: 3

Baby Austin—future Oak Drive model—is due May 6.

Johnny’s anxiety is spiking, Mal’s catatonic, but we’re all good.

Pray for us.

See you in June.

Johnny

Note from the better brother - Johnny is so cooked. I have yet to tell him that we don’t offer paternity leave at Oak Drive so there’s no excuses.