Fabian Geyrhalter:
Welcome to the show, Jake.

Jake Danehy:
Oh, well thanks for having me, Fabain. I appreciate it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I’m super excited to have you. You’re part of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Club. You were also crowned ey, entrepreneur of the Year, and then you are running the apparel brand Fair Harbor that has repurposed 37,166,628 plastic bottles as of last night. Those are the stats into bestselling apparel. So as I’m trying to be a good host, I look you up on LinkedIn and I felt like something’s missing because there’s college and then there’s the next thing, which is Fair Harbor, but it’s true. You actually started the company in college together with your sister, and you have scaled it into this multimillion dollar very values-driven brand. I’m super, super impressed. So take us back to, I guess to Fire Island and how the idea of Fair Harbor started.

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, so I’ll take it back for where at beginning you are correct. I have never had another job besides Fair Harbor since I graduated college, but I’ve done little things in here and there. I’ve always kind of been entrepreneurial at heart. I remember my sister and I actually used to sell Painted Seashells in Fire Island when we were kids, so that was our first foray into entrepreneurship. But yeah, so I guess it’s a zoom out 10,000 feet. So my family grew up going to Fair Harbor and Fire Island when we were kids. It’s just such a special place. The island is about you drive out like 50 minutes to Bayshore and then you take a ferry to the island and it’s really cool. There’s no cars in the island. It’s about 27 miles long, but only about a hundred yards wide covered in Boardwalk. And when we were kids, that’s where we learned how to surf and fish and ride our bikes.
And it was just an amazing childhood. And what was also cool is the places hasn’t changed since the sixties. My mom grew up going there with her family and it’s just like a really wholesome spot. But yeah, I think to your point in sustainability, if plastic waste isn’t disposed of correctly, it goes into the waterways. You have bay on one side and ocean on the other, and in addition you see lots of, when you go to the beach in the morning, you see lots of plastic washing up on the shores. So me as an early age being so connecting to the environment, it frustrated me. I loved surfing and being in the water and seeing plastic waste around was always quite frustrating. So I definitely thought about that a lot and fast forward to when I was in college, ended up running a thesis on plastic waste to defect on our health, our health and our ecosystems.
And my sister Caroline at the same time, we always called her the resident tree hugger of the family because she was going to climate marches when she was in middle school. She was part of the band, the bags, whole ideation in middle school as well. So she’d always been very environmentally focused. And then in addition, we had this shared memory of Fair Harbor Fire Island. And so when I came with this idea of let’s create a company rooted in sustainability really with the idea to promote the mitigation of suse plastics. So part of my studies I found a mill actually converting plastic bottles into yarn. And that’s when I was like, oh, this would be amazing to make this yarn into something. And so that’s when we created the board Schwartz, and that was back in 2014. So we’ve been at this for about 11 and a half years now, and it’s been a hell of a journey, but that’s really where the inspiration started from.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
I mean, there’s so much to unpack there, but just it’s so nuts that Fair Harbor is the name of the beach community that inspired you. And I mean really the idea of Fair and harbor, those two words together for what you’re actually doing. I mean, what a perfect metaphor for your company. Are you now in all resort shops in Fair Harbor, do you have a plaque in Town Hall, city Hall? Like what’s going on with it? W there?

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, the name worked perfectly. It really did. It was the place is exactly what we imagined when we think about the optimal summer place to be. But the name itself, as you said, fair and Harbor just works so perfectly. There’s only one store in town. It’s a general store called, which we definitely are in

Speaker 1:
Very good

Jake Danehy:
Harbor. Yeah, there’s a couple other towns on the island like Ocean Beach where we’re in house there. But in Fair Harbor, the town itself, it’s like out of a movie set. There’s one general store which sells our brand. There’s one restaurant and there’s a grocery store, and that’s it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That is so nice. You brought up about the fabric that you create. So tell us a little bit about that because I’m sure that changed over the last 11 years or so too. We had a variety of upcycling companies on the show because I am drawn to them because I think it’s such an amazing thing to do, and the stories usually very widely how the upcycle, how they actually do that part. So with you, the biggest piece of the upcycling is the fabric. How do you go about that? Where did you start? And so you found this one place. Is it still, I assume it’s not there anymore, or did you advance it and just tell us a little bit about that just to geek out a little bit on the fabric?

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, so fabric journey has been quite, for that word, a journey for me. We found this yarn made, it was a hundred percent recycled PET, and we wove that yarn into the first fabric and it made out of 11 recycled plastic bottles or 12 or something like that when we first started. And that was a huge piece of our, I’d say our fabric growth. We do work with different mills and different fabrications now, and we’ve grown to 47 different fabrics that we source from different sustainable materials. And for us at Fair Harbor, we don’t look at a fabric unless it is as sustainable as we can make it. And so we use organic cottons, we use organic linens, we use a really cool fabric called sea wool, which is a blend of organic cotton, oyster shells and recycled plastic bottles. And it gives you this really cool, that feels just like Marina wool, but it has performance properties, so it’s really, it’s machine washable and it’s got the antimicrobial particles that come from the oyster shell. So we’re always out there trying to find really interesting fabrics and doing those fabrics in a better way for our planet with less impact.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s super interesting. And this actually explains, I think it answers the question that I had on my mind next, which is when I go to your website and I search the product lines on most of your man’s shorts, you share how many recycled plastic bottles make up each product. So you did the whole math and it’s like usually it’s like 11 or 12 plastic bottles were used per product, but then there are many lines where you’re not showing those stats. And I was wondering, wait, are not all products made of recycled plastic? And I think you just answered it, they’re not, but they’re using other sustainable fabrics that you come across.

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, it’s one of those things where we don’t want to use polyester everywhere. And so where we need to use polyester, we use recycled polyester made derived from recycled plastic bottles, but there’s amazing natural fibers that we also love using. So for example, we’ve got an amazing eCOA linen organic linen blend shirt, which we doesn’t have any polyester, so there’s no plastic bottles in that, but it’s made of a beautiful organic linen and then an eco vera fabric, which is sustainable discos.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
And that’s super interesting from a brand storytelling point of view, because I’m sure when you launched the whole idea of look, you buy shorts and there goes 11 plastic bottles that I, I’m sure it was intrinsically, no pun intended, but interwind with your business model, how did this brand storytelling evolve over the year? Now that you’re kind of casting a wider net.

Jake Danehy:
So I’m happy to go through a little bit more of the history and how we got to where we are now,

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Please. Yeah,

Jake Danehy:
So we started in 2014. We had a Shark tank competition, so we participated Shark Tank competition at school. We pitched in front of a couple of celebrity entrepreneurs and we ended up winning $20,000 in grant money to start this business. And that was really selling board short made out of recycled plastic bottles. There was five colors, it was one silhouette, five colors. We made a hundred of each, and we kind of threw it in the back of my car and drove up and down the east coast and sold to anyone who would listen to us, and we sold all those. And so it was a really fun experience. And then from there we were like, all right, we actually might have something here. And so we launched a Kickstarter campaign in 2015 to produce our second production of board shorts. And again, it was just board shorts.
And then we produced those and we sold them in the summer of 2015 and 2016. And the biggest thing that we kept hearing was we would go around to these different trunk shows and we kept hearing the same thing over and over again from women in particular. First they were like, what do my kids and my sons wear underneath board shorts? And they were referencing that their kids wear cotton underwear. And I was like, that sounds really uncomfortable. And then they got to this point and they said that they always cut the mesh lining out of their son’s swimsuits or their husband’s swimsuits because it ruins their vacation. I don’t know if you ever had that experience.
So we ended up, I just kept sharing this over and over again. And so we ended up replacing all mesh lining with this built-in box brief liner. We didn’t set out to solve the chafing problem, the swimwear chafing problem, but it’s something that we really found that was a real problem and we were able to address it. So we’re the first ones to really do this. And that concept scaled tremendously for us. We started to really sell tons of swimwear, and so that was something that we really led from a marketing standpoint, but we always were rooted in this idea of sustainability and protecting the places that you love. And so our foundation is helping promote the mitigation of use plastics, this incredible heritage brand based on our summers in Fair Harbor and Fire Island, but with this problem solution concept that our customers just told us was a huge problem.
And so that’s how we kind of really started to grow the business. And then from there we’re like all, how do we compliment these incredible, we sold millions of swimsuits. How do we get more of a share of his closet? And so that’s when we started to think about other fabrics and fibers of what can really compliment this swimwear. And then beyond that, how do we as a brand resonate with customers in the so-called off season, so not in peak swimwear season, so Q3 and Q4. And that’s also why we started to look at other fibers of how we can remain relevant to our consumers and just continue to gain more of his closet.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Makes so much sense, and I love that you’re actually solving problems along the way. So in the beginning it was more the idea, Hey, we can make this out of plastic bottles. And then it turned very quickly into listening to customers and getting customer insights. I think that that is something that you still do to this day, that your growth strategy is very much based on customer insights. Do you want to share a bit on your feedback loop, how it works with your company?

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, for sure. Customer insights is, we learned that from day one of how important it was and really getting out there and how we started as a business. We did over 500 trunk shows in this first few years of really listening to our consumer to get to where we were, which is a ton of gritty grunt work, but definitely paid off. And I would say that, yeah, so again, we listened to our customers and it got to us that point. And as we started our business, I really thought our differentiator would be the sustainability piece of it. I think that’s very important for our consumers. But what I found out pretty early on was that’s not why they were buying it from us. They were buying it from us because it looked good and it felt good. Those were the kind of key differentiators and sustainability was an underlying factor.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That is super interesting. Yeah, because I was wondering about that, right? Because for you personally and for your sister, that is really, really important that you have that purpose. I know your you’re B Corp certified, it’s really part of the DNA, but then one always wonders how much, and a lot of media outlets are questioning that, and some even say, look, purpose-built brands were big story 10 years ago. Today no one really cares about it. It’s a thing of the past, and I’m not so sure about that, but it’s like how much of it it actually contributes to the initial sale versus how much it contributes to becoming a fan of the brand and to remaining a fan of the brand. I always think that’s really interesting to think about.

Jake Danehy:
That’s a great point, and I’d say that’s really mirrors our belief at Fair Harbor is we are a sustainable purpose-driven brand B Corp because it’s the right thing to do. It’s why we were founded as a business. It’s why we exist. But I don’t believe there’s definitely customers out there that we convert because of that, but a vast majority we’re not converting because of those ethos. We’re converting them because it’s a great product because it somehow solves a problem in their life, whether it’s they want to look good, they want to be comfortable, they want this vibe. But I believe to your point is that it really helps with that retention and them to hopefully fall in love with our brand, not just our products.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, exactly. That’s what I strongly believe that, and it’s great to get that back from you that that’s how it feels within the company too. And how do you create a brand? You need to have that great story, which you do, and then you need to have these shared values, which you have. Do they sell products? Not initially, but they suck people in and they keep them around talking about sucking people into the company. You just had a collaboration with the highly successful HBO series White Lotus, and what was so interesting is I saw you on Instagram, you’re very active on Instagram and everyone go and follow Fair Harbor and Instagram. You actually talked about how long it took you to get that launched. I think it was two years in the making or something. It wasn’t just something within half a year. It was a pretty long, long process.

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, this was a two years in the making. I remember we were dealing with the whole writer’s strike and everything going on with that. Oh,

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s right.

Jake Danehy:
Yeah. So they came to us, I think it was probably even two and a half years ago at this point with this idea of working with the White Lotus team because of how aligned our brand was and beachy and everything of that nature. And we just jumped at the opportunity and it took a long time between understanding what the initial concept of the show was, and then when we found out the concept of the show, we had to be sworn into secrecy because we were one of the first to see the mood board of the show that was going to be in Thailand and everything like that. But it was so much fun to work with them. Yeah,

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah. I always wonder because you did a lot of them, you did RFIs, you did Taylor, stitch Whalebone, it’s part of your DNA to collaborate with other like-minded or adjacent brands. But what I’m interested in this, what makes those collabs on the one hand highly rewarding? On the other hand, what makes them really difficult because I’m sure it’s not like you’re just working with your team, coming up with the new product. There’s so many more complexities that are part of it, but you keep doing it. So the reward must be obviously bigger than the pain that one has to go through to start that.

Jake Danehy:
I would say in our industry building product takes a long time. And what we’ve done a lot of collaborations, because what I love about collaborations is it allows us to bring another voice and another perspective in that makes sense, allows us to bring another voice and another perspective, and then hopefully another customer set. So with Taylor Stitch was awesome because they’re West Coast brand based in San Francisco, really cool vibe, different vibe than Pearl Harbor, but we aligned on having great products together and then ultimately it just really worked. We got exposed to their customer base, they got exposed to our customer base, sold out really quickly, created that demand, that kind of fomo. I just think the collaboration, although there are a lot of work, they take a long time, and ultimately from a revenue standpoint, they don’t really move the needle that much. But I think from a brand awareness standpoint and also just acquiring new customers and being in the zeitgeist, they do a really great job of that.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Very cool. And we talked so much before about the idea of how important it is to listen to your customer, and you had hundreds of trunk shows where you just literally, you were forced to it, right? Because that was your part of your $20,000 startup budget growth strategy, which is so cool that you started it on 20 K. That’s just awesome. But did you ever go against some data that you received from your customers and you did something totally different because you just felt it was the right thing to do and the world might be ready for it?

Jake Danehy:
I didn’t necessarily go against my customers, especially with our hero categories. I’d say that the only times when I really have to go against the customer base and go out on a limb is introducing new products. So our core category is going to new prints. We’re always listening to that, but it’s going to new category. So I’d say one that we launched with really no customer backing was our denim, our sustainable denim. So we launched this, it’s denim. It’s made from recycled plastic bottles. It’s organic cotton, a little bit of spandex, but going from a men’s swimmer company to make denim, probably everyone’s idea of the best next product, but it actually really worked for us and it continues to sell incredibly well. It’s one of our top selling products, but it was just a gut feeling because this denim, for me personally, it’s like what I wear every day. It’s what I wear when I go to the beach when I’m going out and I love a nice wash pair of denim, throwing a white t-shirt, maybe my rainbow flip flops, and that’s going out about town. So it felt right for me. I had no doubt to back that up. But

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Yeah, I mean it seems, on the one hand, it seems super farfetched. If you look at the company from a product tree point of view, we’re beach, we’re doing these kind of, everything is shorts and then suddenly it’s going. But you’re right. I mean in the life of a guy usually anywhere starting at 16 years old until we dissipate, that’s what we wear in a summer day. We wear shorts and then in the evening we change to jeans and that’s kind of that, right? So it is a very logical extension, which on paper would not make as much sense. So you did listen to customers, it just happened that you wear your own customers, so there you go.

Jake Danehy:
Exactly. Yeah, it helps that I’m right in the target demo.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
It really does. It really does. Hey, what was a big breakthrough moment where you felt like, Hey, this is moving from trunk shows to we are actually turning into real brand here. We are actually turning into a real player. I know there’s so many in a startup journey, but was there one where you can put your finger on it and you say, there was this one moment where I looked at my sister and we’re like, whoa, this is happening. Was there something like that?

Jake Danehy:
I don’t remember what summer it was, but I just remember going to the beach and just seeing a ton of people wearing Fair Harbor, people that I didn’t know. And for me that was a realization that, okay, if people like this product, they’re wearing this product, they’re finding out about us. So I was like, that’s a really cool realization when this is greater than I am. And 11 and a half years later, if I thought that we had sold millions of shorts, and anytime I go to a beach, I typically see a fair harbor short. That is, for me to seeing it in the wild is the biggest humbling experience and where I think we turn from a startup to a brand that people are wearing and choosing to wear.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Totally, totally. Yeah. It’s not necessarily the numbers that you see on your screen and production going crazy, but then seeing it in real life, that just gives such a reaffirmation. I had Stacey of Stacey’s p chips on, and she said that her big moment was when I think she was in a marathon and she saw Stacey’s pita chips bag trashed on the ground,
And she was so excited. She’s like, oh my God, this is our product. Someone trashed it, it’s on the ground. And she took it and she framed it just in every liquor store there’s the $1 bill frame, the first dollar. That was her big moment, which was really, really funny. What does branding mean to you? I think it’s so interesting because I mean, straight out of college you jumped into starting launching a brand that now is very well known. It’s beloved, it has a great brand story. People love what you stand for. What have you learned about branding and what does branding mean to you now? What 11 years after you launched?

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, that’s a great question. One of our advisors once told us that, but we don’t own the brand. We own the company, but we don’t own the brand. Our customers own our brand. And I always thought that was really interesting because we do everything in our power to build up this company, to put our vision out there, but the only reason we exist is because of our customers and that they have a feeling why they purchased from us. It’s a discretionary purchase. They don’t need our product. Yes, if you go to a beach, you need a swimsuit, but you don’t need to buy our product. And so it’s like how do we get these customers to resonate with us and have an emotional tie to this brand? So brand I believe is the ultimate moat. It’s the ultimate thing that differentiates you in the market.
Yes, you’ve got a great product and bold transparency. We were the first ones to come out with the anti chafe swimsuit. We opened Ripped Off. I didn’t know that. Oh, yeah. We were the first ones to do it. We were the first ones to do it, did it eight years ago, came out and said, not your dad’s swim short fight, the chafe, anti chafing, all that stuff. That was big campaign 20 19, 20 20, 20 21 blew the socks off of it, but people ripped us off. We’ve had tons of copycats, and I think that if Fair Harbor was just a liner company and that’s all we stood for, we wouldn’t be around anymore. But we stand for so much more than that, and that Fair Harbor, the brand is so much larger than just a liner company and an anti chafe company that I believe is the moat that we’re building. So that’s a long-winded way of saying brand is kind of everything, and it’s that emotional reaction that gets hopefully consumers to purchase from

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Us. It’s not long-winded at all. It’s actually, I think it’s everything that our listeners need to hear because I keep saying it over and over, I’m like, yes, you’ve got this one brilliant idea and this one brilliant differentiator and this awesome feature, and yes, you patented it and I’m glad that you trade market the name, but it’s meaningless because they can grab anything from you. If they have more money than you do, they can and they will if you’re successful and you should be successful. So what do you have? You have brand. And so I always teach that philosophy of branding is really an insurance layer around your company. They can steal all that stuff, but people still love you for what you stand for as a company, and because they had so many great experiences with you and for how you innovate continuously and how you make their life better, it may just be by bringing out chains that are super comfortable and that are also right sustainably created, et cetera, et cetera. So I’m glad that you say that because it’s very much how I think about this too. So that’s great. Here comes the most difficult question of our episode.

Jake Danehy:
Let me hear it.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Well, yeah, I’m glad you want to hear it. That’s already a positive rather than you chomping off. So I always love to, when I work with my clients, the same way that when I talk with my guests on hitting the market, I always ask them, if you would take the entire company, the entire brand, the entire product line, everything around Fair Harbor, and you put it through this funnel and out comes only one word or maybe two words, what would that be? Right it it’s like the vibe. How do you describe it? So with Coca-Cola, it’s happiness and that’s what they want it to be, and so everyone kind of has that vibe. How would you describe that in a word? I sure hope that you peaked at my questions prior because otherwise it’s really difficult to answer on the spot.

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, this is a very tough one. I’d have to say it’s salty. Salty just epitomizes our brand. It’s like that vibe, that salty air. When you’re at that beach, you’re in that mindset, you’re off duty, you’re hanging out, you’re comfortable, you’re with your friends or family. That’s how I would explain the brand.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Interesting. It’s a vibe. It’s definitely a vibe.

Jake Danehy:
Yes,

Fabian Geyrhalter:
For sure. It also kind gives you certain guardrails of where your brand can go and cannot go because it kind of describes the place that you play in. Right, and that’s your playground. Cool. Very, very cool. Do you have any advice for founders, potentially even brand advice for founders as a takeaway? Anything that you learned that you think people listening could benefit from?

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, I would say that building a brand and a business comes at different phases, and there’s different stages to this growth trajectory. At the beginning, I think it’s just you got to launch, you got to put something out there. You got to launch a, I always like to joke that our first board short was we sold to the three Fs, which was friends, family, and fools. And not to put anyone down, I’m super grateful.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
You love the fools, you still do,

Jake Danehy:
But I’m super grateful. But our product was not good and wasn’t, I always like to joke that we had a launch party, and I was at the launch party and I was wearing our board shorts, and I went to the bathroom and I opened up the fly and the Velcro came off. I was like, oh my God, pick this out. So it was my first foray into customer service. We had sold 20 of those shorts already, took them back at the local seamstress. So as you can imagine, I was freaking out great, but those people are still purchasing from us. We treated them well, and so I’d say my first piece of advice would just launch, just get out there, start to learn from the customers, and it doesn’t have to be perfect. That’s first and foremost. Then as you get to further stages, I’d say my biggest learning is that I should have put harder guardrails on the brand.
Earlier, I think as we were growing, we were like, all right, where’s it going? Okay, this doesn’t have to be perfect. But then as you continue to get bigger and bigger and how important to our conversation brand is now we’re at a stage where those brand guardrails need to be super tight, and it’s because we’re at a level on a scale that we need to continue growing and building that brand and building that moat, those guardrails, and I’m not the only one doing it. Early on the brand lens and brand guardrails were my brain and my experience, and now we have other people working for us. And so I’d say now those guardrails need to be tight. So I’d say that’s the two things early on launch, continue growing. Then you’re need to be brand and maniacal, and you have to be super focused with what you stand for and who your customer is.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Totally love it. Absolutely. Absolutely. What’s next for the Fair Harbor brand? What are you guys excited about that you can share in the next six months or so? What are you working on?

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, I am feeling really good about our product expansion and where we’re going, and we’re in spring summer 2026 market right now, so we’re selling to our com. I know, right? For normal people. Yeah, it’s wild. But the reception has been amazing from the products, and I’m just really excited to, so wholesale has been a growing channel for us for the past probably three years. We’re about six or 700 stores across the country, and this is, I think for us, it’s really exciting to see the reception of our additional product categories, but for us it’s like how do we bring it all together? How do we make sure that that brand experience that they have at this third party retailer is truly a fair harbor experience? And so what we’re really working on is how to bring that cohesive storytelling from the emails that people receive from us to the Facebook ads that they see, to how they see us at wholesale and how we show up at retail is really important. So I’d say, yeah, we’re excited about the growth. We’re in tons of stores and yeah, it’s been a lot of fun.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
That’s super cool, and it’s so challenging once you hand the baton over to retail and suddenly you’re just a couple degrees separated from your customer and it’s anxiety inducing because you need to hammer home your story, and how do you do that with those very, very limited means that you have in the retail environment? Super challenging. I’m glad you’re doubling down on that, and it’s so good to hear about all of the growth. Where can people buy Fair Harbor currently? Should they go to your website and where can they follow you personally too?

Jake Danehy:
Yeah, so FairHarborclothing.com is where you can find all of our stuff. We’re in Nordstrom’s, REI, Scheels, Dick’s Sporting Goods, and a bunch of other local retailers. So if you see us at your favorite local store, and then you can follow us at @FairHarbor and Instagram or me personally, @Jakedanehy on Instagram, so yeah.

Fabian Geyrhalter:
Awesome. It’s fantastic. You know what, our listeners love nothing more than a concise show that is about 30 minutes, and they know that I rarely do that. Usually it runs into the 40 minutes and I’m like, I am just so thrilled that we got it down to this concise 30 minute mark. Hey, listen, Jake, thank you for sharing the story, for giving us a brand advice and super excited to keep following your brand on that trajectory.

Jake Danehy:
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for having me. This was a ton of fun.