I usually don’t like menswear shops. They just seem artificial. I’m always greeted with a condescending smile. Then there’s that smell…you know, the one where they’ve somehow found a way to make cologne permeate perfectly throughout the room. It feels awkward; it feels forced.
Walking into Ledbury, I was greeted not by a Cruella DeVil lookalike, but by local blogger and content coordinator Brian McDaniel, who led me to one of the comfiest couches I’ve ever sat on. Looking around, there were no pictures of God-like men sitting on top of antique cars in the desert. No loud techno music blasting throughout. Just antique wood, with shirts delicately laid out. It felt comfortable, like it was OK that I was wearing a crewneck and skinny jeans in a menswear shop. This feeling is exactly what the brand is after.
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Ledbury’s goal is to reach out to the average young professional. Not the type who wears a flashy logo just for the sake of it, but the smart consumer who follows the model of “show, don’t tell.” Established in the thick of the economic downturn in 2008, founders Paul Trible and Paul Watson came up with an idea that could persist through any financial climate: make a great product through simple execution.
While studying at Oxford, the duo apprenticed under some of the premier tailors and shirting experts in London menswear. By learning the ins and outs of the trade, their goal was to produce a custom-fit shirt made out of the finest fabrics in a cost effective way. Instead of outsourcing to other firms, Ledbury chooses everything, including the materials, patterns, and fabrics, internally. Their clothing is then produced in Italy. With a heavy focus on customer service and continuous feedback, they’ve built an online presence through strong word of mouth. Quite simply, these shirts sell themselves.
When sitting down with Trible, a couple of things stood out to me. He’s a really approachable guy, appearing to possess no arrogance about his position as the head of a thriving company. He sat fairly relaxed, giving candid responses. Although his job allows him to meet people and go places many of us will never see, he comes off as a guy’s guy. And in the business world that’s important, because in order to sell to people, you can’t just relate to them, you have to be them.
Your brand doesn’t have a logo on the chest. What’s the importance of showing, not telling that you’ve bought a nice shirt?
I think for years, clothing brands tried to create this aspirational picture of what you should be. So if [their logo] was a guy playing tennis, or a guy riding on a polo horse, that says, “Dress this way and you’ll be like this.” It’s a status symbol. For us, what we’re trying to do is not be all about the logo and price point and flash. It’s not about telling you to be something else in aspiring to this polo player or tennis player. What we do is say, “We’re going to make a great product that’s going to fit better, it’s going to feel better, and it’s going to make you look like a better you.” It’s not going to be you looking like someone else. So, [our goal] was to sell something that, when people put it on and feel the fabric and it fits well, they’re excited about that and they respond to it, as opposed to a flashy logo or label.
What’s the process that goes into a Ledbury shirt?
We design the shirt here. Basically, come up with what we want to do with cut, color, cuffs, placard dimensions… whether it’s short or long. We’ll come up with a fabric pattern or go through historical swatch books of different patterns that the fabric mills have made. And once we come up with something in terms of fabric, we go to at least eight different Italian mills, select something from them, and put in an order. Then it’s about a three month process to get the product spun and woven. From there, we ship it to our factory. Our factory puts it together. We usually put together a sample first. Take a look, make it sure it’s what we’re looking for, and then put it in production. So, usually from beginning to end with sampling, it’s a four to five month process.
Would you collaborate with any other brands?
Yeah, we love collaboration. We think we do shirting really well. What we try to do is find other specialists who do other things really well. We’re looking to do bags with a company called Moore & Giles up in Lynchburg, who does some very cool stuff. Some shoe brands like Alden and things along those lines would be really fun to collaborate with, because making a shoe is so much different than making a garment. And then some leather and accessories, like the belts we do with Marcus Wiley. We love those because he’s a master craftsman and makes everything by hand. It would take us 20 years to learn to do what he does. Gabe [Ricioppo] and I have talked about doing something in Need [Supply Co.] for a while, and doing a Richmond Virginia [collection] that fits both of our brands in kind of a quirky way. We did some cufflinks with a friend in Charlottesville. We’re always open to partnerships, but we haven’t dived into as many as we’d like to.
In starting out with Ledbury, what was the goal of the brand?
For us, there were two things we wanted to accomplish: we wanted to create the best shirt we could possibly make, but do it at a price point where it brings people into that luxury market. People like us, being 30 years old and not being able to pay $200 for a shirt but wanting something that fits well, feels great, and lasts a long time. And the other thing was that in terms of a brand, we wanted to create something that was very authentic to who we were. We wanted it to represent us and represent the customer more than representing this grand idea of how the customer should be living and whatnot. I worked with a tailor on Jermyn Street [in London] for basically a year, learning the craft and what goes into a great garment, from the stitching to the fabric to the buttons. And once we had that, we said “OK, we’re making a world class product, how are we going to sell this product?” And we wanted to sell it in a way that where it was available to people who wanted to spend no more than $150 for a shirt. The only way we could do that is by not going wholesale, but going directly to customers. And so we adapted our business model of this idea of creating a great product and making it more readily available to a much wider audience.
In terms of a brand, we said “what’s the most authentic representation of what we’re doing?” My business partner and I, who are from Virginia and New Orleans, also spent a considerable amount of time in the UK studying tailoring and shirting. So, our brand is Anglo-Southern American in a way. And I think in terms of what we’re doing here in Richmond, we don’t advertise our stuff very much, we more document what we’re doing in the partnerships we have. For us, we do a short run, we do a lookbook every two weeks with Connie’s Shoe Repair, the guys from Rappahannock. We’re doing five local artists profiling our shirts. It’s more telling the story of who our friends are and how we’re interacting with them, and that’s more of an authentic brand than, “Hey, here’s Ledbury, it stands for this glossy image.”
Your father was a prominent politician and is currently the president of Christopher Newport University. Meanwhile, you’re CEO of a clothing company. What are the parallels that make a great leader?
I think it’s having a vision, believing wholeheartedly in that vision, and being able to communicate that to other people. Whether it’s doing that in a school where we’re going to build X Y and Z, and the students are going to come and we’re going to have this great university, or it’s building a company where we’re going to start a luxury clothing business in one of the worst economic climates since the Great Depression, it can work because of these principles.
And how do you build confidence in your vision?
Blind passion [laughs]. I think you see that you get validated along the way, and really have to believe you have something great. For us, early on, by focusing on product first and foremost, just creating a very good thing that we felt very confident that we could put up against any other piece of clothing, people would really respond well. And after you start getting validated, people start coming back. Your friends and family will always buy once, but when people you don’t know start returning in droves... we have somebody that owns 164 shirts now; that’s when you start realizing there’s something to this vision. The first time we went up to GQ, we were sitting with a tailoring editor who’s been there for 25 years, and she was distracted and looking around the closet. We were giving her the spiel and showing the shirts, and she felt the shirt and was like, “Wait a second, let me get this straight: you’re just two normal guys… selling really nice shirts… to other normal guys?” And we were like, “Yeah, that’s it.” She was like, “I love that!” So, it’s just those small little pieces of validation that you build on and hopefully create something more substantial.
You all have been traveling a lot recently--what’s been going on with that?
For us it’s great. We’re this clothing company and we’re mostly on the internet, [but] our big things are tactile experiences like fit and quality, things you touch and feel. For us, anytime we can go out and meet customers and let them touch the shirts and see what we’re doing [that’s] new, it communicates the business better than any way we can. With the city-based collections, we did Nashville, we did Charleston. We actually designed shirts that we thought were appropriate for [those places]. We went in, partnered with a bunch of friends, whether they be restaurants or clothing businesses, they modeled our shirts for the lookbook. Then we had the big party and people get to come in, have a glass of bourbon, try on the shirts, and invite their friends. Old customers love it because they get to see what’s new, and new customers are into it because they get the whole brand experience. Then with Spotify and Facebook, we’re just getting into very cool offices that are doing very interesting things and kind of telling our story. Letting people look at the shirts and purchase them. We learn a lot in the process as well, so it’s very cool. They had a couple hundred employees who heard the story and gave us advice on what to be doing on Facebook, and we told them how they should be wearing their shirts [laughs]. It was a nice back and forth.
Since most of your business has been online, how were you able to get your name out there?
It’s mostly been word of mouth and PR. People pick us up, like in GQ or Fortune or Financial Times, telling our story. And that’s been big--people see it, purchase it, and come back. And yeah, we do some marketing now too. We do a little bit of advertising online and try to figure out where our customers are and what they’re looking for. Everything is so measurable, so we’re trying to do it in a responsible way. But we’re just trying to figure it out, though, like everyone else is. It’s a lot better than blindly throwing money out there, at least--you can wave a good idea and see what customers are looking for.
I haven’t really seen much presence on websites that delve into streetwear as well as menswear, like Complex.
Yeah, The Complex Network is cool, it’s great. My college roommate started a great streetwear brand called Durkl.
You were college roommates with the guy that started Durkl?!?
Yeah, Will Sharp was my college roommate for four years. I love his stuff, but for us, that’s not our audience. Some of it is--guys who love streetwear who cross over when they need something for a wedding or a job interview. But we’re a little more buttoned up and a little more classic and contemporary than that. So we’ve been on a handful of those and there’s been a good response, but I think the majority of that has been fashion focused.
Have you kept in contact with Will on what works for each other’s brands?
Yeah, I see him all the time. We bounce back ideas on a regular basis. They do wild, creative stuff I love, but they do wholesale and we do direct online and through the store. So now, they’re looking to do more direct and we’re looking towards wholesale. It’s great to have a partner in crime.
Any collaborations coming out with them?
[Laughs] We’d have to figure out what it would be. We’ve talked about it in the past, doing shirts. They just came out with some really good denim. God knows when he first started I probably had every piece, supporting him, trying to get it off the ground. He started out right after we graduated from college with my other college roommate. He’s done well in creating a really interesting business. It’s funny that we both went to a pretty conservative school in the western part of the state and we both ended up in the clothing business.