On the latest episode of Executive Exchange, Leadership editor Ruth Umoh sits down with Tecovas founder Paul Hedrick and CEO David Lafitte to talk about how country music and people migrating south has benefitted the company to grow and make over $200 million in sales in 2023.
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00:00So let's talk about this next generation of Western.
00:02Have you seen an influx of shoppers
00:05that is tied to big cultural movements?
00:07For instance, Beyonce dropping her Cowboy Carter album
00:11in April, any of those trends?
00:14Yes, for sure.
00:16I think if you look at a few things, country music,
00:20I think streaming was up 23% last year.
00:23When we see country music concerts,
00:25whether it's Luke Combs, Morgan Wallen, Post Malone,
00:29whoever, going into these different cities,
00:32our stores just see the benefit immediately.
00:35Even in non-traditional, again, markets,
00:38a lot of people are migrating South.
00:41And I think the Wall Street Journal just
00:43said 13 out of the 15 fast-growing cities
00:46are in the South, eight of which are in Texas.
00:48So we think it's important to go to non-traditional Western
00:52markets.
00:53But the fact is, a lot of people are coming to us as well.
00:56The top three cars, I think, out there are pickup trucks.
00:59There's a lot of different data points
01:01showing that this trend continuing.
01:05Absolutely.
01:05I do think it'll continue.
01:07I'm thinking about Fortune, personally.
01:09A number of Fortune 500 companies
01:10are now based in Texas.
01:11I think most of them, actually.
01:13It's always a tie between Texas and California.
01:15So we're definitely seeing that shift.
01:16And we're doing a lot of corporate events.
01:18So we'll turn them on to Boots as soon as they get there.
01:21Exactly, and then we'll see that Patagonia
01:22by Cowboy Boots collaboration.
01:26One trend I want to highlight, the New York Times
01:28reported on this, a surge in wedding cowboy boots,
01:31people wearing them to the altar.
01:33How are you responding to that trend?
01:35We're loving it.
01:37In addition to our retail experience,
01:39we offer a lot of branding of boots, painting boots.
01:43So we have wedding parties coming in
01:44and wanting to put the date of the wedding
01:47and all their initials on it.
01:49But it is a big trend and something
01:51that we definitely want to capitalize on.
01:53Yeah, we want our stores to be places where we're not
01:57saying no to the customer.
01:58We want to be able to say, hey, what are people asking for?
02:01What are people not asking for that if we did offer it
02:04for them, they would say yes in all caps?
02:07We realize people cared about personalization.
02:10So we do branding in all the stores now.
02:11You can brand your hat.
02:12You can brand your boots.
02:13You can brand your wallet.
02:15We now have a boot in basically every year's plan,
02:20if not one, maybe even more than one
02:22that are oriented toward that wedding season.
02:24So we released a boot earlier this year to hit wedding season.
02:28We've got colors that are oriented toward it.
02:30And just by having that extra moment where someone can say
02:33yes, where you weren't providing them something before,
02:36it's totally organic new business.