No outside funding. No celebrity co-signs. Just grit, discipline, and branding. Bear Handlon built Born Primitive from a single product into a 9-figure eCommerce brand.
Born Primitive started as a niche apparel side hustle — now it’s one of the fastest-growing DTC brands in the fitness space. In this episode, founder Bear Handlon shares how he scaled without a dime of VC money, built an operationally lean machine, and turned authenticity into his biggest marketing weapon.
If you’re building a brand in a competitive space, this is a blueprint in niche ownership and brand discipline.
Key Topics Covered:
- The mindset shift from side hustle to full-time founder
- Building a resilient supply chain as a bootstrapped brand
- Using rejection to sharpen focus and fuel growth
- Branding lessons from a founder-led business
- The role of military discipline in running a lean Shopify brand
Resources:
What is The Shopify Growth Show?
What would you do if you were starting today? To help, here are half-baked startup ideas, growth marketing tactics, and stories from founders and creators - including my own journey as a bootstrapped business owner. All of the content is centered around helping founders, creators, and investors starting today.