Eight years ago I was selling gloves out of a truck-bed.

Eight years ago I was selling gloves out of a truck-bed. That's not a marketing line. That's actually how this business started.

I'd worked construction myself, and I'd spent enough mornings watching guys at the deli buying gloves at three times what they should cost because nobody had a workwear shop within ten minutes of the site. So I bought a couple cases of Carhartt A536s and a couple of leather palms, threw them in the back of my truck, and parked at job sites at 6:30 AM on the days I knew crews were starting.

First week I sold maybe twelve pairs. Second week, thirty. By month four I was clearing $1,200-1,500 a week in profit, working out of a truck. The math was insane in retrospect — no rent, no overhead, no payroll, just a guy with a truck and the right product at the right time.

What I learned in those months I still rely on now. The morning rush is when guys buy what they forgot the night before. The foreman is the one who sets the tone for the whole crew's relationship with you — if he likes you, you sell to ten guys instead of one. The conversation is more important than the price. The guys at the deli weren't paying triple because they wanted to pay triple. They were paying triple because the deli guy knew their name and the gear was already there. Convenience and trust are the actual product. The gloves were just the SKU.

I expanded slowly. Added boot socks, then watch caps, then hi-vis t-shirts. Tried to add boots and that's when the truck got too small. By month nine, I had crews calling me asking when I'd be at their site, and I was running three trucks worth of inventory out of the one I had.

I'll be honest about something most business stories skip. I wasn't planning on a storefront. I liked the truck. The truck was free, the truck was flexible, the truck didn't have a lease. The storefront happened because the truck got robbed and I had to make a decision in 36 hours. That's a different post.

But the truck era is the thing I think about most when I'm trying to remember why this works. Not the inventory system, not the website, not the brand. The fact that a guy bought a pair of gloves from me in a parking lot at 6:34 AM in November because I was there and I knew his name. Eight years later, that's still the whole business.