Mark Bollman IV, Founder & CEO, Ball and Buck | The Jeff Crilley Show

On this episode of The Jeff Crilley Show, Jeff sits down with Mark Bollman IV, Founder and CEO of Ball and Buck, to talk about building a brand around one idea: make it better than it used to be. Mark shares how he launched the company from his fraternity house at Babson College in 2008 after growing frustrated with clothes that fell apart....

Show Notes

Most of us have bought clothing that looked great online—only to have it fall apart a few months later. What if your wardrobe was built to last decades… and even be passed down?

On this episode of The Jeff Crilley Show, Jeff sits down with Mark Bollman IV, Founder and CEO of Ball and Buck. Mark started the company in his fraternity house at Babson College in 2008 after getting tired of low-quality products that didn’t hold up. Inspired by years of hunting and time in the field with his father and grandfather, he built a brand focused on durability, craftsmanship, and American manufacturing.

In this conversation, they discuss:
- Why Ball and Buck tests products in harsh outdoor conditions before they ever reach the store
- The “farm-to-table” approach to sourcing fabrics, leather, thread, and hardware
- Partnering with Horween Leather and other heritage makers
- Building clothing designed to improve with age and be passed down
- Expanding from pop-ups to flagship retail stores across the country

Mark also explains why they refuse to chase trends or release “filler” products—every item has to be the best in its category before it makes the cut.

Learn more at: https://ballandbuck.com

#BallandBuck #MadeInUSA #Menswear #AmericanManufacturing #Entrepreneurship

What is The Jeff Crilley Show?

Jeff Crilley is a former news reporter, who spent more than 25 years in newsrooms across the country. He’s an Emmy Award winning journalist, who decided to make the jump from news in 2008, when he founded his own PR Firm, Real News Public Relations.

Today, the firm has more than 100 clients, and Jeff continues to tell the stories of interesting people he meets along the way.

These are those stories.

Coming up next on The Jeff Crilley Show, you're gonna meet the great Mark Bollman IV. He's the founder and CEO of Ball and Buck. He's been obsessed with quality since the very beginning. You're gonna hear his story. Next. Many are predicting that the worst is yet to come, which is unfortunate, said one person here. Until now, they've enjoyed the reputation of being the nation's icebox. Watched a burglar in his home this morning by webcam. As a journalist of over twenty five years, stories are what make my world turn. Reporting live from The Dallas News, I'm tonight. Jeff Crilley, Fox four news. But in 2008, I took the my familiar life and started a PR firm on my home. We're talking about anyone with a camcorder like the one I'm using becomes a television network. We started slowly growing the company, and we now have over a 100 clients. And we've branched into the world of live digital broadcasting. I now own eight different TV studios and have a huge team. And the stories that I now get to share are sometimes the most important of my life. Life has a funny way of coming around full circle. This is The Jeff Crilley Show. Well, I knew from the very get go that I would love my next guest because he's obsessed with quality. That's been my hallmark. We started our companies at the same time. You'll hear in a minute he's done much better than I have. But Mark Bollman IV is in the studio. He's the founder and CEO of Ball and Buck. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Alright. So 2008, you're in your fraternity house. That's right. And how did this start? Making t shirts. So, yeah, I started this in Babson College back in o eight, which is outside of Boston. Mhmm. I mean, I'd always wanted to start a business and had started some when I was younger. And really, it it the genesis moment was kind of this collision of being disappointed with having products that I purchased fall apart as I wore them. And all these memories and experiences I had had growing up in the outdoors with my dad, with my grandfather, with my stepdad, and so on, where the gear you had really could make the difference between a good day and a great day or a bad day and a good day. And so the brand was created really to answer that question, which was why you know, the the old timers will say they don't make it like they used to. My question was, why can we not make it better? And so that's what we did. So we set out to build this brand to to really revolutionize the quality of products that you could get and center those around the sporting lifestyle. And it's not that you have to hunt and fish to be a customer of ours, but it's we test it, and we really put it through the rigors of the field. Harsh environments, freezing rain, briars, the whole, you know, the whole thing so that you know when you're going to the office in your ball and buck shirt, if it can survive the, you know, the rigors of the field, it's certainly gonna survive the rigors of the boardroom. So that's kind of the genesis of the brand, and it started with t shirts and went to button down shirts, and we did some Kickstarter campaigns and crowdfunded products and opened pop up stores that turned to permanent stores. And fast forward to now, and we've got, you know, a website, a wholesale business. We're sold in a number of other stores like Orbis and have a store here in Dallas and are opening additional flagship retail stores across the nation now right now and go forward. So impressive. Okay. Much more from Mark in a second. We found this great video. Let's go ahead and roll that. There's a huge amount of products out there that are just, you know, low quality, mass produced garments that that really don't tell anything about who you are when you wear them or or or what you stand for. The products that we sell in the Bollman Buck brand is really about giving you something that connects you with the craftsman that that put his blood sweat and tears into making that product. I come from a family that's been hunting for quite a long time. My great grandfather is pictured up on the wall next to my uncle and my grandfather. Ever since I was seven years old, I would fly up to Flint, Michigan to go duck hunting with my grandfather. And you go out there, you can hear the experience and the passion of a, you know, a guy who's lived. And that's kind of what it's about. I think take that, distill that, and and really build it into a brand concept. So the name Bollman Buck actually comes from George Washington's reference to shotgunning. He actually told his troops to use the buck and ball method of loading their muskets, which they thereby use multiple smaller pellets to create a greater impact on target. Everything in the store is made in The USA. We really are passionate about enabling the buyer to really have a connection to exactly where that spend is going. Because often it's made in China, made in Taiwan, made in Indonesia. You don't really have a connection to that. When someone comes in, we want them to be able to know. And when they're voting with their dollars, we want them to be able to make that vote for domestic production. We're not here to just produce a garment that's built on the cost of a person's well-being. We want people to be passionate about the garments they produce and really have skills and craftsmanship that has been built over generations. So the Bollman book customer is a guy who who really appreciates high quality things, who doesn't wanna have a 100 pairs of jeans. He wants to have one great pair of jeans, one great pair of khakis, one great pair of boots. So it's not just consumption to consume, you know, another pair of jeans because it's a new month. It's I'm gonna buy this and I'm gonna have this for a long period of time. I'm gonna really wear it, get a lot of value out of that garment. And that's where, you know, that's where we really strike a connection with our customers. So impressive. Mark, I saw something in your website, built to be passed down. So the dream is that you're producing these garments that could really be passed on to the son and the grandson. That is true. Yeah. And and that's another integral part of that quality, which is you make something that's very well made or the best in the space, not only can it be passed down, but it actually gets better with age. And so that's actually one of the main driving factors in a lot of the material choices that we have, whether that's a wax cotton fabric that's, you know, a centuries old fabric that you can reproof and and bring back to its waterproofness for the entire life of the product. Wow. Or great leather. We we make a special leather specifically for us with Horween, which is the nation's oldest tannery in Chicago. Wow. But all these things, like, you buy it, and that's just day one. Right? That's that's the blank canvas. And then it's about building the patina over time through your memories, and you ultimately end up with this living journal of all the, you know, great hunts you've had or camping trips with your kids and it, you know, takes on a life of its own. And then you hand it down. And so these are products that are fought over by your grandkids. I love it. I love it. You were telling me a story right before the show about farm to table. Share that analogy. Yeah. I mean, think that's a great way to think about our philosophy on the product sourcing and the importance and, frankly, the critical nature of sourcing and knowing where these things come from. It's very common in the clothing manufacturing space for brands to use what's called full package manufacturing, which in the food business, you can liken that to a college cafeteria in which the the person writing the menu says, wanna serve spaghetti and meatballs. And they call up one company, and that company then sources everything to make that dish, and you get it. Right. And they're they're sourcing based on profit margins. And as we both know, the quality and the flavor in that food is not very good. Right. The other way to do that is think about, you know, your favorite restaurant or the best steakhouse you've ever been to. It's it's very common for that restaurant or owner to know the farmer who raises the cattle, to know the grower who grows the greens and the potatoes and so on. Sure. And you know what that food experience is like. So we do the same thing when it comes to clothing. Mhmm. We know the thread. We know the buttons, the makers of all the componentry that goes in. Sure. So that when you end up with a great, you know, product and and or dish or a product, you you know, okay. Wow. This is made using the best things out there, and it's great. And we like to create the best. I mean, that's why we're here is to make the highest quality products on the earth, period. That's it. And you have a a loyal female fan base. Talk about that. We do. Yeah. And I think I was mentioning to you before that the general outdoor kind of concept that brands use is called shrink it and pink it, which basically means you take a men's shirt, you just make it a little smaller, then you make the colors girly, and you release it. That is not how we do it. How we did it is we partnered with a woman out of Texas named Brittany Longoria, who hunts three hundred plus days per year and spent two years fully developing from the ground up of an outfit and a collection of gear for ladies that uses the exact same quality materials and constructions as the men's, and is actually built for ladies who do this and and do it hard and do it a lot. Wow. So it's just that it's it's the same intentional thought process and philosophy of how we build products and how we make decisions goes into the creation of the ladies collection. All right. Let's talk about your Dallas location, and then I want you to talk about expanding. Absolutely. So as it stands right now, we have our pop up in Dallas, down in Inwood Village near Highland Park. Inside there, you'll get to see the entire collection of gear, accessories. We bring in some really strategic third party products, of which I know pretty much all the owners and founders of those brands. So it's top tier, top notch, top quality service. It's the kind of place you you go in, and we always say amongst ourselves in the store, it's we want your visit to the store to be the best part of your day every time you come in. And so that means attentive, listening, having conversation. Where are you what are you doing this weekend? What are you doing tonight? Have you tried this restaurant? This isn't like a transactional experience. This isn't this isn't a you're going into a store like I've seen and I experience all the time saying, can someone help me with this? Right. Or even even worse, but even more common, I'm like looking at the product and I'm on the phone Yes. In the on the website of the company checking the inventory myself and learning about the product myself when there's an associate standing there Right. Texting their friend, and I'm like, hello. Right. That's think about that. Yes. Then think about the opposite. That's what you get with us. It's a totally radical look backwards to look forwards kind of mentality. And you're a young man, but you're still an empire growing mold. Oh, yeah. So what what do you do you see for the next few years? A lot of stores, a lot of continued product development, when we can make it the best. So we don't just launch what I kind of have coined as filler fruit. And the analogy is, and like, you get the fruit salad and there's a lot of unripe cantaloupe and things often that are just not good, but they hit the weight so they can sell it. Yes. Very common in clothing as well with filler fruit products. They're not well thought out. They're not great quality, and they're just there because they need that type of thing. We don't do that. But as we develop the product and if we can make it the best, we'll launch that, and we've been able to do that continuously. And there's a lot, of openings to do more. So we'll do that, and we'll add additional stores. We'll grow from here to Nashville is coming online in probably ninety days. I mean, we're right on the doorstep of that. We'll add Fort Worth, Charleston, Birmingham, Atlanta. So it's I mean, I I wouldn't be surprised that if in five years there were 40 or 50 stores. Wow. Congratulations on your success. We're gonna pull up his website. And as we scroll on the website, I want you to talk about how you find your fashions, if you will, for the next season. Some of them are classics, but are you always keeping your eyes peeled for some new trend? So we don't really trend Chase. Okay. So when you think about ball and buck and you think about what products you get from us Mhmm. How I like to explain it is if someone said, go home. Here's a suitcase. You're gonna pack this suitcase and it's the last products you're ever gonna have to wear for the rest of your life. We would want a 100% of those products to be Paul and Buck. Uh-huh. And the reason why is is that you know they're gonna last, they fit great, they're functional, and you trust them. That's what we want. It is not the, hey, Hawaiian prints are in. Grab that one. Right? It's not it's not the, hey, there's this great studded leather jacket that I wore that to that concert. That that is not what we're gonna do. We're gonna make the ultimate Mhmm. Leather jacket, the one you hand down to your kid and your grandkid. We're gonna make a pair of trousers that you can wear, change in the oil on your car, playing a game of pickup basketball, and to a country club dinner. Wow. It's total field to city. And so in that vein, there's always, you know, there there's always cool new products, but they really have to check a lot of boxes to be able to go from idea to closet. Alright, Mark. We have a couple minutes left, so look into the camera on the left and talk to the customer who needs to come visit. Well, we want you to come visit us, at any of our stores, go online, and just appreciate a new take on quality because if you're like me, you know, it's been disappointing to see, especially with the advent of social media and AI, all of this fake low quality products that seem so exciting in your hand, on your computer, on your phone. And then you get it, and it's just disappointment after disappointment after disappointment. And so my invitation to you is to come see what it can be. And as the old timers say, you know, I wish they make it like they used to, well, we make it better. So come see what that's like. Touch and feel. Try things on and, you know, you owe it to yourself. So invest in the future and and, you know, you're just holding on to it and giving it to your kids and their them to their kids. Wow. It's an investment to last. Mark, thank you. You inspire me. We're gonna end with the website, which is ballandbuck.com, the great Mark Bollman IV. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. You bet. For now. We'll see you next time.