How two athletes are making custom sports apparel in the heart of St. Paul, and competing well in a new arena.
By Beth Ewen
™He’s a history major; I’m an English major. So it makes sense we’re in manufacturing,” says Jessica Lutter with a laugh, about her business partner and husband, Reid, who started Podiumwear in 2003 in St. Paul.
A cross-country skier who competed in the 1992 and 1994 Olympic trials, Reid was a Nordic ski coach, complaining to his fellow coaches how mad he was about the teams’ uniform suppliers—uniforms were always late or wrong or high-priced, and he decided he could do it better. “I was taking my vast background of European history and ski coaching and started it,” he jokes.
At first they outsourced the manufacturing, but in 2010 decided to break from their former partner and make everything themselves, in a warehouse with 10 sewers in St. Paul, or when there’s extra work at any number of Hmong-American women’s homes with independent sewing businesses.
That’s when Jess, a former Alpine racer who met Reid in college in Maine, joined the company to handle development and marketing. Today the Lutters are experts in 3D rendering, ceramic coating and digital sublimation—not to mention fabric sourcing and everything else that goes into making apparel.
And they’re proud to be making it all in the USA, which allows them to offer minimum orders of just five pieces—far lower than factories in China will allow—and invite customers to work with their in-house designers to get exactly the piece they want.
In all, they turn out about 450 pieces a week in the spring and up to 1,000 pieces a week around Christmas.
Stressful? Sure, but they take it in stride, with Reid’s philosophy of staying patient, or Jess’s prescription to hit the road on her bike.
Upsize: Describe Podiumwear as it stands today.
Reid Lutter, Podiumwear: We’re at $1.4 million in annual sales, with 11 full-time employees here.
Upsize: In your St. Paul warehouse, where it looks to be bursting at the seams.
Reid: All our sewing is in South St. Paul, with another 10 employees there. We started in 2003 as a cross-country ski apparel company. In cross-country skiing we’re the dominant player in North America.
This past year cycling became our biggest line. We were getting way out of whack—too much business in winter and none in the summer.
Jessica Lutter, Podiumwear: We only get into sports we know about. In cycling we’re just starting to hit the radar. The really big differentiator for us is, we make it.
Reid: From the beginning I wanted to do it myself. Why? The quality. There’s no excuse if you made it. You can’t say the guy in China made a mistake.
Upsize: What advice did you seek out to get started in manufacturing?
Reid: I’m kind of stupid. I didn’t seek out advice [laughs]. In the 1980s and ’90 when we were skiing, there wasn’t digital sublimination.
Upsize: That’s the method you use to print your apparel.
Reid: In 2003-04, that happened to be right when it got better and cheaper, and we started the company in 2003. The first printer that printed for us was a banner company. My brother is a fashion designer—he was one of the first people I called. He has his own line, so I talked with him.
Jess: He helped out with the nuts and bolts of sewing.
Reid: The ski community is small. I started the National Nordic Foundadtion, and people were willing to work with me on what should the product be. That smoothed out some of the bumps in the road. The first year we lost money.
Upsize: How did you get started?
Reid: In 2003 I was in Fairbanks, Alaska, coaching at the junior nationals. We were all complaining about the other companies—their product hadn’t changed in six or seven years.
It was really bad, and I was thinking how much longer am I going to be able to run a nonprofit. I thought, even though I don’t have any background I can do it better.
Upsize: Why did you think that?
Jess: Everyone else was so bad!
Reid: We hang our hat on customer service and it’s a hard thing to sell. We have built a big pyramid of customers who talk about our service. They say, yeah, I had a design idea and I was able to talk to the designer about it. We feel we’re doing custom the right way. It makes us proud every time.
Jess: It’s really rewarding to be part of that community.
Reid: The great part now is we’re helping that community. Every one in our community bikes and skis. People say, why not make paintball apparel? But we don’t know those products.
Upsize: Both of you bike and cross-country ski, and did so competitively. What about your parents?
Reid: Both our parents were entrepreneurs so we didn’t have the fear. This is just what you do.
Upsize: You started the company in 2003, but then made the decision to manufacture on your own. Tell me about that.
Jess: 2010 was when we started manufacturing our own goods.
Upsize: That really took off for you.
Reid: Getting stuff in the Olympics in 2014, that was a nice feather in our cap. How we got that? The ski community is small. The Australians called us. Then in 2013 when we signed Jessie Diggins, no one was doing a women’s line in Nordic skiing.
She’s a Minnesota gal, Jessie Diggins, a champion skiier. Bringing her in in 2013 was a turning point. We said it’s time to build stuff for women. A woman should not be in a man’s suit, in my opinion. Jessie lines up with our company perfectly in terms of attitude. Nobody tries harder than she does.
Upsize: What’s been a dark day for your company, and how did you recover?
Reid: The hardest part is when stuff goes wrong and you have to figure out how not to disappoint a customer. Machines break. People get sick. Fabric gets stuck in customs. The worst day is when you feel you’ve let down a customer.
Upsize: What’s an example of that?
Reid: This winter there was a dock strike, and we needed fabric that got stuck on a boat. We were late on stuff. Having been on the other side of that, I know what that’s like. The toughest days are when stuff goes wrong, and we’re figuring out how to solve problems.
Jess: We’re always learning. There’s always a new problem to solve.
Reid: There’s a book called Traction. I’m in a CEO group with other Traction companies.
Upsize: That’s one of the elements of EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, that many small businesses follow.
Reid: What you find is my CEO peers who make all sorts of different things, we all have the same problems. It makes you more of a forgiving person, being a business owner. There are a lot of hard-working people here but things still go wrong.
Upsize: Why do you say you became more forgiving?
Reid: In this country right now there’s so much anger. You can go two ways as a business owner. You can get angry, or you can realize that people are involved. When there’s a lot of people involved, stuff happens.
Upsize: Jess, you were a competitive skier, and you were also in another line of work before joining your husband’s company.
Jess: I was in landscape design school. I had to quit, because there was so much work here. It’s actually been great. I work with my sister, too. It’s something that works well. Our background in skiing helps.
Reid: I think it’s more about personality. My coaching philosophy is the same thing. We’re trying to give kids/athletes the framework for having a happy, better life. You shouldn’t take yourself so seriously, that you’re changing the world.
Upsize: Do you get that philosophy from coaching?
Reid: I’m never going to yell at an athlete, because that’s not my style. When you’re coaching, the athlete’s success is the athlete’s success. It’s the same thing at Podiumwear. We love when we’re out and we see people wearing our apparel. But it’s never going to be—look at the person wearing this.
Upsize: What was a turning point for the better for your company?
Reid: A big one was this fall, to sign on with NICA, the National Interscholastic Cycling Association, for the mountain bike leagues in high schools. They came to us because one of the Minnesota guys had experience with this gear.
I coached his daughter. Jess and I were on a date night, and he called from the NICA. It’s that personal reputation that got them to call us.
Jess: It’s a perfect fit.
Reid: We understand that high school coach. One thing they don’t need to do is be a clothing manager. The uniform is vital; it creates unity, pride and attachment.
The NICA, these are the people we can help. If they are just looking at price, they won’t choose us. Half of our yearly orders are re-orders.
Upsize: And you told me earlier people can re-order just one jersey, because you’ve already done all the design work, etc. That’s a big difference from others.
Reid: We grew 40 percent two years ago, and 20 percent last year.
Upsize: So it’s working. Here’s one more question: What’s one thing you wish “they” would have told you, about being an entrepreneur.
Reid: I’m glad of the things they didn’t tell me…
Jess:…because we wouldn’t have done it.
Reid: Every entrepreneur starts with enthusiasm, and you need that. If you really want to do something, do it. Start it. Keep at it. You always think you’re the only one, and then you go up West 7th Street in St. Paul, and there are hundreds of entrepreneurs.
People are succeeding and failing every day. There are definitely days when you say, oh god, why didn’t I got to medical school. But those are rare.
Jess: It’s a very stressful thing to do, when I look back at the hard parts, to get to the positive place we are now.
Reid: Those were really necessary. In retrospect, the stress—it’s like embrace it.
Jess: And go for a bike ride.
[contact]
Reid and Jessica Lutter are co-owners of Podiumwear Custom Sports Apparel, a manufacturer of custom apparel for sports teams and athletes in St. Paul: 651.214.2863;
jessica@podiumwear.com; www.podiumwear.com.
