MouthMedia Network

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Dana Glaeser of Slightly Alabama

Nov 4, 2019·0 visitors

Dana Glaeser

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Nov 4, 2019

MouthMedia Network · 3:35 AM

The following conversation is an excerpt from a podcast interview with Dana Glaeser, Creative Director of Slightly Alabama on the Retail Is Your Business podcast. You can scroll to read more of the conversation or click through to the full podcast episode.

Dana Glaeser · 4:16 AM

Hi, I'm Dana Glaeser, I'm the Founder and Creative Director for Slightly Alabama, which is a line of men's leather goods. What I love about retail is the fact that we can build community and we can interact directly with the consumer in a way that you can't online.

Chris Hansen · 4:16 AM

So, tell me about the name "Slightly Alabama," because there must be some sort of connection to Alabama or you wouldn't name your company "Slightly Alabama".

Dana Glaeser · 4:17 AM

I’m from Alabama, my family goes back about several generations in northwest Alabama, a little area called Sheffield, in the Tri-Cities; I spent a lot of time at my grandparent's house in Sheffield, And that's where my love of craft and design flourished.

Dana Glaeser · 4:18 AM

My grandfather was a hobby woodworker, so I spent a lot of time in his woodshop. I spent a lot of time sitting at the kitchen table early in the morning with my grandmother, and teaching me how to draw, and then just spending the time there doing those things.n

Dana Glaeser · 4:19 AM

When I started my company in 2013 it was really a moment in my life where I was going through a career crisis, I was a creative director for an in-house advertising department inside of a financial company, and it really wasn't for me.

Chris Hansen · 4:19 AM

That's really interesting. I feel like there's a theme in this show, when we've spoken to founders of companies, and a lot of them started at advertising or marketing jobs and left to follow a passion.

Dana Glaeser · 4:20 AM

That is a common theme, to be unhappy in marketing or advertising. I thought about why I was so unhappy in my career and what I really needed to do with my life, and decided I'm just going to go back to doing what I love and what feels most natural to me, which is making things.

Chris Hansen · 4:20 AM

I don't want to say it's a cliché, but there's something about that job where there are these creative people who are trapped in a world that's maybe not as supportive to creativity, and so they leave to go-

Dana Glaeser · 4:20 AM

I think it's a great training ground for anybody who's going to run their own business. I think one of the challenges in the creative space, when you're working in that world, is that the client knows they need what you offer, but it's not 100% their world.

Dana Glaeser · 4:22 AM

One of the things that was most enticing to me about starting my own company is the chance to finally be my own creative director, and pursue what I believed was right without anyone saying no.

Cathy Schepis · 4:22 AM

So, did you grow your business by opening the store, or had you already grown your business?

Dana Glaeser · 4:23 AM

In the spring of 2013 I decided I wanted to do this. In October, I filed the LLC, for the paperwork, and in November, I quit my job, and we sold our first product by December, and then in February, we went to our first trade show.

Dana Glaeser · 4:25 AM

We opened the New York store just about a year ago, as an extension of the workshop. It’s a men's clothing store, 40 other designers within a particular aesthetic. All of those designers are personal friends of mine, creating goods that can't be found anywhere else in New York.

Chris Hansen · 4:26 AM

That's a pretty great concept. So, in terms of the leather goods that you produce, the idea was let's get it out there, have some retails partners where the goods were being sold; e-commerce, and then you go to your own brick-and-mortar. Is that still the strategy?

Dana Glaeser · 4:27 AM

We're just e-commerce and our store now. The whole wholesale world, the retail world, has changed drastically, even in just the past six years since I started the company. Partially, it's just out of necessity.

Cathy Schepis · 4:27 AM

So, are you making these leather goods in New York?

Dana Glaeser · 4:27 AM

Yeah, I make them myself in New York.

Chris Hansen · 4:27 AM

On-site in the West Village?

Dana Glaeser · 4:27 AM

Yes.

Chris Hansen · 4:28 AM

Wow.

Dana Glaeser · 4:28 AM

Yeah, we have 2,200 square foot store in the West Village; the front 1100 square feet is our retail environment, the back 1100 square feet is my workshop as well as a dive bar that I built back there that is for my friends and for the parties we throw.

Cathy Schepis · 4:28 AM

I love this. So you have built your own community there?

Dana Glaeser · 4:29 AM

Yes.

Cathy Schepis · 4:29 AM

Talk about your customers and what intrigues them the most, and how much time they spend in your store when they're there.

Dana Glaeser · 4:29 AM

We started meeting people who lived in the neighborhood, in the West Village, which is unique in New York, in the sense that it's truly a neighborhood, it's kind of separated from everything else; when you're in the West Village, you don't know that you're in New York City.

Dana Glaeser · 4:30 AM

It's a lot of locals who have lived there for a very long time, they've raised their families there, a lot of creatives, a lot of very successful musicians and actors live in the neighborhood.

Chris Hansen · 4:32 AM

I feel like, in New York specifically, there's this attempt for authenticity within a retail space, and I don't know how many brands succeed. It seems like you're succeeding in creating a community in the neighborhood, and that's really important to you and the brand.

Dana Glaeser · 4:34 AM

Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Experiential is a big thing in retail now, for very good reasons, you have to come up with new ways to attract customers and to keep them in, but a lot of times it can feel contrived. Even if it does feel contrived, it's still fun.

Dana Glaeser · 4:35 AM

Maybe it goes back to the fact that what I do is such lonely work, so whenever I can, I think the idea of building family is so important and the experiential side of it is the best and most natural way to build that family.

Dana Glaeser · 4:36 AM

We have the dive bar; if you can't build relationships and family in a dive bar, then you got major problems. We've got the workshop where people can engage with me, see what I do, and ask questions.

Chris Hansen · 4:37 AM

It feels so real and authentic and honest, but it does create this one problem, which is scale. How do you scale this dive bar concept, this community concept, how do you bring that to potentially a digital experience, the e-commerce piece? Is there an intention to do that?

Dana Glaeser · 4:37 AM

I think the truth of the matter is you cannot bring it to an e-commerce or a digital space; so we're not even going to try to do that. Maybe some brilliant tech guys and digital marketers can figure that out, but I can't, and I don't want to spend time or waste time doing that.

Dana Glaeser · 4:39 AM

The only thing you can do in the digital space is build a beautiful brand, and communicate with your customers as much as possible. We have people who visit from around the country and the world and they know of us and they come to meet us, and that's always wonderful.

Cathy Schepis · 4:40 AM

So, what do you do, or where else do you go in the city that creates an environment that you want to be in or that supports you or inspires you?

Dana Glaeser · 4:40 AM

Cowgirl, in the West Village. It’s a great restaurant, it's got a Southern feel to it, I really enjoy being in there, not to mention they serve really good Southern country food. My wife says I eat there way too often, but I don't agree.

Chris Hansen · 4:40 AM

Is your wife from Alabama?

Dana Glaeser · 4:40 AM

No, she was born in Indiana, raised in Florida and California, so she will say clearly that she is not a Southerner, not that she doesn't want to be, it's just she's not, so she's very proud of her roots, for good reason.

Chris Hansen · 4:41 AM

Chris Hansen: Does she consider herself a Midwesterner?

Dana Glaeser · 4:42 AM

I think she considers herself a woman of the world. But she is proud of her roots and she is very proud of her wonderful family, so that's important to her, and I identify with my roots and she does with hers.

Dana Glaeser · 4:43 AM

I don't know, I hate to bring up Billy Reid again, but I just think that he's doing it right. I really love being at his stores and at this events that he does up here, and the fact that he flies to them and he's there on-site for them.

Dana Glaeser · 4:43 AM

That's pretty unprecedented for a designer of his level. At the shindig every year, at least this past year, we had two days of breakfast and he served the breakfast himself, that's pretty cool.

Chris Hansen · 4:44 AM

I definitely feel that because I don't have much brand loyalty, but I definitely have a pair of Billy Reid shorts that I'm going to wear into the ground. I love the experience of going in there, it makes me feel good, it’s warm and inviting. Did the relationship come organically?

Dana Glaeser · 4:45 AM

Our relationship with them developed because our store was right around the corner. When you have store called Slightly Alabama, people are interested to find out what the hell that means and what it's all about.

Dana Glaeser · 4:46 AM

They came over, and we started finding out we had all of these deep connections, and then it just became a very natural relationship. We threw lots of parties, they all came over and hung out, and we just became friends, we could have been from anywhere.

Cathy Schepis · 4:46 AM

So how often are you having parties at the store and when can we come?

Dana Glaeser · 4:46 AM

We just had one big one. We used to do them about once every week or every two weeks, and that's exhausting, and so we're going to do them once a month, going forward, just because it's easier to manage.

Chris Hansen · 4:47 AM

What is a party at Slightly Alabama, what should you expect?

Dana Glaeser · 4:47 AM

Usually always music-related, music's a big part of my background and my life, so either a live performance or something related to music. It usually ends up with me having to kick everybody out because we're not a real bar, we have to be out of there by 10PM, usually.

Chris Hansen · 4:48 AM

So, Dana, you mentioned how important music is in your life, we’d love to know, who's your favorite band, your go-to, "I got a playlist, Spotify playlist, this band's going to be on the playlist"?

Dana Glaeser · 4:48 AM

I think The Gaslight Anthem is probably one of my favorite bands, from just a hard rock standpoint and from a song-writing standpoint, I think most of their songs' titles even sound like chapters in a book of literary fiction.

Dana Glaeser · 4:49 AM

But I think probably the number one guy, and this sounds, once again, cliché, but it's Jason Isbell from northwest Alabama, who I listened to for about three years before I knew he was from that area, so I have to say I don't know why-

Chris Hansen · 4:49 AM

There's a theme here, there's definitely a theme.

Cathy Schepis · 4:50 AM

So, suddenly I have come to really love arm tattoos, and yours are quite extensive. So, what made you go down that road, and are you eventually going on your hands?

Dana Glaeser · 4:50 AM

Yeah. So, I do have two full sleeves on both of my arms, and I'm thankful that I don't have any more arms left because they are very painful to get done.

Chris Hansen · 4:50 AM

Are you going to do the neck?

Dana Glaeser · 4:50 AM

My wife would kill me if I did the neck, but I still might do it one day and just say, "Surprise!"

Chris Hansen · 4:50 AM

The neck is definitely a commitment, and then when it goes to face...

Dana Glaeser · 4:51 AM

It's never going to go to face. It's never going to go to face. I got my first tattoo when I was 18, my best friend and I decided that we were going to do this as a bonding thing, and so I got a really bad tattoo on my back, small, but it's on my back.

Chris Hansen · 4:51 AM

I feel like that's the start of everyone's tattoo journey, a bad tattoo on their back.

Chris Hansen · 4:51 AM

What's your biggest screw up? What was the thing that you screwed up and you were like, "Oh my god, this is going to either ruin me or the brand"? Is there one thing you're like, "I wish I wouldn't have done that. I'm okay screwing up, but that was ..."?

Dana Glaeser · 4:52 AM

When you let a customer down, in way, shape, or form, whether you take too long to deliver the product, or whatever custom product you built for them was not exactly what they expected, it feels giant, it feels like it's the end, even though it's not.

Dana Glaeser · 4:53 AM

A lot of people always talk about being a perfectionist, and you have to let that go if you're going to be an entrepreneur, and that was the hardest thing; to screw up and wake up the next day and say, "Well, we're not dead yet, so let's just keep going.”

Chris Hansen · 4:53 AM

Well, Dana, I know that the folks, other than coming down to the dive bar in the back of your retail store, if they want to get into touch with you, and they can't get to the bar, how would they do that?

Dana Glaeser · 4:54 AM

We're the best on our Instagram, which is @SlightlyAlabama.com, and our email is Hello@SlightlyAlabama, you can email us and either me or our director of retail will respond. Instagram is always the best way to get in touch with me, through DMs.

Chris Hansen · 4:54 AM

Awesome. Well, thank you, Dana.

Cathy Schepis · 4:55 AM

Thanks, Dana, it was great talking to you.

Dana Glaeser · 4:55 AM

Thank you.

Chris Hansen · 4:55 AM

And thanks, Cathy, for stepping in as my co-host.

Cathy Schepis · 4:56 AM

Thank you, this was a fun conversation.

Chris Hansen · 4:56 AM

A big thank you to our audience for joining us. I'm Chris Hansen, from IgnitionOne, thanks so much.