This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey, hey, what's up everybody? Welcome to Side Hustle School. My name is Chris Guillebeau, so glad you're here. Welcome as well to our new segment, Failure Friday. Been running these for about a month so far, getting some great feedback.
The whole reason we're doing it is because I believe we can learn as much from failure as we can from success, perhaps even more. So that's why we're presenting this collection of short stories all about mistakes, missteps, disasters, and of course, failure. It's okay, it's not a bad word, it happens, right? Just like our Throwback Thursday segment, you're gonna hear directly from side hustlers who have struggled to get something off the ground. They're gonna tell you a quick story of something that went very wrong.
So far, these stories have been very honest, very transparent, you know, I had this great idea. I thought it was a great idea at least, but it turned out to not be a good idea. Or, you know, maybe it was a good idea, but something went wrong in the execution, which is along the theme of what you're gonna hear today. So I really applaud their courage and I appreciate everybody who's been part of this so far. Just like I appreciate you, our listener.
Thank you for being part of this. All right, today's short story features Kyle Bergman from New York City. We have told the successful story of his Swoveralls project on episode 394. Swoveralls are, well, he'll describe it in more detail, but basically think sweat pant overalls. And they're awesome, not just awesome, they're fantastic.
More on that in a moment. We also featured him in the "100 Side Hustles" book. So great product, great success. But of course, he's had some struggles along the way, including a new product line in partnership with NASA. Like many a failed space shuttle launch, this one didn't go according to plan.
Let's hear from Kyle. I'll come back at the end to wrap us up. [Music]
Hey there, my name is Kyle and I am the founder and owner of The Great Fantastic. The Great Fantastic is creating the world's comfiest apparel products using sustainable resources and ethical manufacturing methods. Our hero product is called Swoveralls.
Swoveralls are the glorious combination of sweat pants and overalls into one incredibly comfy masterpiece. The story I'm gonna tell is something that happened last year involving Swoveralls and a couple new styles that we were making. In 2020, we were lucky enough to get a design approval from NASA, the government space agency, it make a limited edition collection of Swoveralls with the NASA logo on them. The Swoveralls were designed to be mostly white with a black front pocket, black straps and black jogger cuffs. We had been working with the same manufacturer for years at this point and also with the famed fabric supplier.
And we were really confident that we could make these NASA limited edition Swoveralls really come to life. So we went into production and as we started to receive the samples, we realized that there were some imperfections or markings that were shown in a pretty big way in some of the pairs. Said differently, there were just like blue dots, black dots on the white part of the Swoveralls which was totally not planned and some of the pairs just looked terrible. I was devastated because we made a limited run and it was pretty expensive to do this limited run and we just didn't foresee this being an issue. The backstory is that we used a proprietary blend of fabric combining organic cotton and recycled polyester.
What we discovered is that there are natural contaminants or byproducts that happen to be in the recycled polyester fabric that can sometimes show up in clothing. We had never done a white pair of Swoveralls before so we didn't think to test the fabric before and be mindful of this. Luckily, we were able to partner with an incredible designer who specializes in upcycling products and we created a super limited edition tie-dye version of the NASA pair so we just dipped them in some tie-dye. The lesson here is to always, always test and get samples of what you're gonna make before you go into production no matter how confident you are about the product or how confident you are in your suppliers. There's just always things that could go wrong.
Listeners, never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat. There's always a way back from something. There's always a way to regroup, mix it up somehow. I really appreciate Kyle helping us out with this segment. Thank you for sharing that story, Kyle.
Pretty cool about the tie-dye line, the unexpected tie-dye line of NASA themed Swoveralls. I encourage you listeners to check out Kyle's website at swoveralls.com or you can go to thegreatfantastic.co, thegreatfantastic.co. Either one works or Swoveralls on Instagram, Swoveralls underscore actually, S-W-O-V-E-R-A-L-L-S underscore. Check it out. If you have a question or you'd like to update us about your hustle, just come to sidehustleschool.com/questions.
Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you'll come back tomorrow. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. My name is Chris Guillebeau. This is "Siduscle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
