How do you take a business from a basement office in Queens to a $25 million company—without losing the personal touch that made it special in the first place? Joining us today is Fred Meyers, President and Founder of Queensboro, a company that has revolutionized the custom logo apparel industry. Fred spotted a market gap while doing laundry in his college dorm room, long before e-commerce, fax machines, or even 1-800 numbers were mainstream. What started as a small side project in the late 1970s has grown into a thriving business with over 125 employees, helping small businesses across America build their brands through high-quality custom apparel.
About Fred Meyers
Fred Meyers is the founder of Queensboro, a company he started in the late 1970s that revolutionized the custom logo apparel industry. Before the existence of fax machines or 800 numbers, Fred identified a market gap in the premium polo shirt space dominated by brands like Lacoste and Ralph Lauren. Through determination and innovation, he built a supply chain from scratch, transforming a college dorm room operation into a multi-million dollar company that has sustained growth for over 45 years. Today, Queensboro serves major clients like Costco, Burger King, and Pepsi, while maintaining its commitment to helping small businesses build their brands through custom apparel.
Resources
Queensboro website: https://www.queensboro.com
The B2B Agility podcast website: https://www.b2bagility.com
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Transcript
Greg Kihlstrom:
How do you take a business from a basement office in Queens to a $25 million company without losing the personal touch that made it special in the first place? Joining us today is Fred Myers, president and founder of Queensborough, a company that has revolutionized the custom logo apparel industry. Fred spotted a market gap while doing laundry in his college dorm room long before e-commerce, fax machines, or even 1-800 numbers were mainstream. What started as a small side project in the late 1970s has grown into a thriving business with over 125 employees helping small businesses across America build their brands through high quality custom apparel. Welcome to the show, Fred.
Fred Meyers: Good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, yeah, looking forward to hearing more about this. We’re gonna get into the details closer to present day in a minute, but why don’t you start by just giving a little more, I know I shared a little bit, give us a little more about your background and how you got started on your journey with Queensborough.
Fred Meyers: Sure, so I’m a accidental entrepreneur, I would say. I had my business up and running before I even had a chance to think about whether this was something that I really wanted to do. But as you mentioned, the college years were, that was where it all started in college. You know, I kind of grew up in a suburb of New York City. I went to school in New York and kind of grew up wearing Lacoste shirts. You know, it was the alligator shirts. It was a big brand back in the day. It’s a big brand now, but I don’t think people understand it today the way that it was then, which was kind of a big social fad. his old preppy handbook, preppy interest that was going on. And these polo shirts were kind of at the center of it. But I was a tennis player growing up, and I loved to wear these shirts. And as the brand became more identified as kind of a status symbol logo, I became increasingly uncomfortable wearing, associating myself with that brand. And, uh, but I love the shirts. I love the shirts. And, you know, you talked a little bit about, uh, doing laundry in my college dorm room. And every time I would take one of these shirts out of the dryer and, uh, just feel the Christmas of the fabric and, um, how it was renewed in the process of laundering, which, you know, most clothes get worse in the process of laundering. And these shirts just kept getting better and better and better. I became upset about the fact that I was losing a friend, you know, and the fact that I wasn’t, yeah. comfortable wearing these shirts anymore. And I thought, gosh, wouldn’t it be great if you get the same quality shirt as this Lacoste shirt? Because there were those who said, it’s just about the alligator. You can put that alligator on any shirt and it wouldn’t make any difference. But I saw, by taking the shirts out of the dryer myself, I saw that this was really an outstanding piece of fabric. And wouldn’t it be great, I thought, if you get the same quality shirt with anything you want on it, any logo or design. So instead of being a walking billboard for Lacoste, Ralph Lauren and everything those guys stood for, you could kind of be building, building your own brands. So, you know, I, I kind of started thinking that it was a personal branding kind of tool that people would respond to. But as I started to kind of put the, put the word out and ran the idea by people, it turns out that like small organizations and businesses, teams and things like that were also very interested in using the shirts to kind of build team and community in a small group. And that ended up being kind of where the market took us was more towards small businesses. And we were the first people actually back in 1980 to offer custom logo apparel on polo shirts, hats, these kinds of things. And this was, you know. If you went to a country club, you could get a shirt with the country club logo on it, but there was nobody offering that service to the rest of the world. So we were, I’m not going to say I’m like Al Gore and invented the internet, but I kind of did invent this space.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of the internet, you know, you, as you mentioned, you know, Queensborough started long before, you know, the, the internet was invented by someone maybe. Um, yeah, you know, it predates the internet, but you’ve managed to stay relevant through, you know, many decades of change. I mean, we’ve seen a lot of growth, certainly seen the growth of e-commerce and, and things, you know, what’s been your guiding principle and. blending, you know, some of those probably more traditional customer service values from the eighties and nineties, perhaps with some more modern digital strategies.
Fred Meyers: So, um, the thing that, um, I was always kind of drawn to is I started getting into business and saw some different opportunities develop in like selling to stores or, um, selling to schools, that kind of thing. I mean, cause none of that was. You know, I, I was, I, one of the, my first projects is where we took ads out in the back of, um, alumni, um, college and university magazines and said, buy a shirt with the Stanford logo on it or the, you know, university of Michigan logo on it. There was no such thing even as college licensing back then. Um, so the schools were happy to sell us the ads and. You know, we did our thing, but that was a whole different like avenue that I could have, could have gone to. But the thing that I was really liked about the response we were getting from the small businesses as I was developing those relationships, those unique relationships with, with the buyer, as opposed to selling to a store or that kind of thing. And, you know, as it, as it’s worked out, our niche is a small, medium sized businesses throughout the United States. Our markets kind of scatter around population. So mostly around. The cities are customers, which are owners of small, medium sized businesses. I mean, uh, I had no idea about this going into it, but these are the greatest customers in the world. Um, they’re incredibly loyal. They’re very reasonable, practical people. Everybody’s kind of dealing with the same issues and problems. Um, you know, the consumer market is a little tough, you know, people are a little hard to please. 350 million at a time, but we’ve developed amazing relationships with our customers. And as the tools have developed, going back to your question, how have you been able to stay relevant as the technology and the tools have developed over time? I saw in each new evolution, an ability to kind of get closer to the customers with speed and accuracy and communication.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. I mean, so, you know, growing if, if, if your target audience was very large companies and you had a few customers and stuff like that, that’s one thing, you know, you maintain few relationships, but you know, your target is small businesses and yet you’ve been able to scale and scale quite successfully. How do you, it sounds like, you know, technology has helped there, but how do you maintain those personal relationships with customers at scale?
Fred Meyers: So you have to be super responsive. That’s the, that’s the main thing. The definition of a personal relationship evolves a little bit in the world of e-commerce. So I think whereas in the past, when we first started, it was the actual one-to-one human to human was essential. And that’s the way we started doing it. You know, you can you can make that connection now a lot more efficiently with emails, chats, other methods of, you know, communicating back and forth through the portals like Facebook and that kind of stuff. I think the main to keep that connection, keep it personal. I think the most important component is the speed of your responsiveness. So, always I’ll kick when I send an email off to a company with a question about something and they respond, you know, you get the form response back. Oh, thanks so much. You’re so important to us. Your concerns are our concerns and we’ll be back to you and 72 to 172 hours, you know, and it’s not like this is a small company, you know, this is like a big company. So, um, that just doesn’t cut it. You know, I mean, if you reach out, the nature of relationship is responsiveness. If you reach out somebody, you, you need to hear back really quickly. So I think, you know, in a, in a, in a word responsiveness is the answer to the question of how do you maintain those relationships at scale? Um, you know, over time.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Well, and you know, just more to that, that point of scale, you know, it’s, I’m sure you get inquiries, but there’s also, I read Queensborough has more than 26,000 customer reviews. So, you know, that’s, that’s a lot, right? How do you, you know, how do you use this feedback? I’m sure a lot of companies would love to have that many that are much larger even, but you know, how do you use this feedback to improve You know, your marketing, your business strategy, you know, how do, how do you use that to your advantage?
Fred Meyers: So, you know, we’re, we’re a little bit like sugar junkies, you know, candy junkies in the sense that, uh, you know, when we get that, when we get that hit of dopamine from somebody saying, Oh, you guys are great. You did a good job. You know, we’re like, how can we do this again? How can we do this again? So we’re all watching in these comments, we’ve got a Slack channel where, um, we’re sharing the positive. comments that come out throughout the whole company all day long. You know, if a day goes by and there’s additions to that channel, we’re all like, we need our fix. We need our, we need our customers to tell us we’re great. So that informs everything that everybody’s doing throughout the business, not just the marketing team, but, you know, the comments are about your quality. So good. You know, that, that production and the quality control team, like they don’t want to be the one that sends out a box that has something in it that’s not perfect. You’re so fast to respond to our questions. We call it our customer experience team, the people in charge of making sure that customer experience is great. They don’t want to be the ones that don’t respond quickly. In the marketing, we get the comments, your prices are good. The variety is so good. I love the quality of products. The marketing guys don’t want to send out stuff, the marketing teams, but send out promotions and things that people aren’t responding to. to answer the questions, just to keep that communication in front of everybody at all times.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah. Well, I also hear, you know, there’s a lot of authenticity and the, you know, so in other words, like you’re using, you know, you’re, you’re basing things off reviews. You’re trying to be not just an automated system that again, make somebody wait for 72 hours for an answer, you know, all those things. How do you maintain, you know, there’s, there’s always this, this temptation to. fake it till you make it, whatever, you know, whatever, you know, cliche you want to say is like, there’s always that, that tendency to want to strive for a little bit more. And I think a lot of times it’s well-intentioned, but there’s not necessarily something backing it up. How do you, how do you find that right balance of, of telling authentic stories about your brand and not, you know, and, and making sure that you have something to back it up?
Fred Meyers: So, um, I mean, I think it starts with our recruiting process, really. Um, and how we bring people into the business. So I was in business for like 30 years or so before it really completely dawned on me that, that, uh, a business will never be better than the people that are working there. It doesn’t mean that if it’s not a good fit, it doesn’t mean they’re not good people. They’re just not a good fit for your business. So, um, we kind of developed a profile of an ideal employee and, um, uh, we call it the four Ps. Um, and, um, you know, we, uh, after, um, you know, a little bit of frustration about not doing better, particularly coming out of the recession. Um, that’s when we really got focused on what do we need to be better and started with, with the people. And so we made a whiteboard, we got the team together, the, the leaders of the team made a whiteboard, whiteboard, put all the qualities of a great employee on there. And we saw that it kind of shorted itself. out into buckets. So the, uh, the way the buckets ended up, I think the first bucket, it was about like being cheerful and friendly and nice. And, you know, that kind of like was positive. And the second bucket, it was like, you’re good at your job and, you know, you think about new ways to do it. And that was like productive. Um, and then we kind of said, saw a theme growing here. So let’s, you know, let’s, uh, it evolved into what we call the four P’s. So like I mentioned, the positive MVP, and this is the four pieces, what You know, it’s kind of like our DNA of the business at this point. And this is how we tell authentic stories because we’re kind of authentic people and don’t put results in front of process. You know, and the quality of what we do is not measured by how much money or what we sell, but you know, how authentic we are, how true we are to our values as we do it. The four P’s real quick. The first one is positive. And that’s about the energy that you bring to a group or your group. So, and you know, there’s kind of a positive and negative side on this and it’s important is that you kind of select and recruit for who is bringing energy is making sure you avoid the people that are taking energy away. And so, you know, that creates a vibe and it works nicely. The second one I talked about is being productive. So obviously you have to be good at the job. You have to be good at your job because. If you’re not good at your job, if you don’t have the basic skills that you need, you’re not going to do a great job. And then another P, the third P is principled. And we say the principle is treating other people the way you want to be treated. People have all kinds of things they believe and things like that, but on a basic level, You know, it’s the golden rule, do unto others. The thing about the principled P, about being principled is that if you can see somebody treats people the way they want to be treated, you’re not going to get any real surprises out of the way they behave, which means that you can trust them. And trust is really the basis of communication. So the principled P is about creating an environment that people can trust each other and be vulnerable when they need to, because that’s an important part of growth and learning. So that’s the third P and then the fourth P is proactive, which is just kind of a, you know, the main example we talk about the proactive P is if you’re walking across the floor, the piece of paper on the floor of trash, you know, do you, do you see that it’s there? Do you step on it or do you stop and do you pick it up and throw it away? So, you know, people are going to have a kind of a different profile on the P’s. Some people are going to be more productive, more positive. And we’re not saying you have to be a superstar in any of these, but we’re saying you have to have all of them to be a great employee. And that’s the beginning of how we tell an authentic story at scale. And we’ve had, you know, a number of thousands of employees over the years. And if you ask any one of them, including the ones that are here today, what’s the best thing about working at Queensborough? They’ll all say it’s the people. You know, we develop tremendous relationships here amongst ourselves, amongst our team. We support each other. through thick and thin, and I think that’s what allows it to all happen.
Greg Kihlstrom: Yeah, I love that. Well, you know, as we wrap up here, I want to ask you a couple more questions here. Lots of industries, I would imagine apparel included, you know, there’s increasing not only competition, but commoditization and people using greater automation, AI, all of those things. So, you know, what do you think is going to be the secret to your success? And, you know, given all those things, given what you just said about the focus on the people and the authenticity, You know, how do you look at the next few years, regardless of how much, again, AI or other, other things may, may come to bear, you know, what, what, what are you focused on to be successful in the years ahead?
Fred Meyers: Yeah. So I think the main thing there is obviously blocking and tackling. You do take care of the fundamentals of business and you don’t lose sight of that. Doubling down on responsiveness. You know, when we first started, we didn’t, nobody, we didn’t have any competition. We were the only ones doing it and. There’s a process of getting a logo transferred to a digital form so it can run on an embroidery machine. We call that digitizing a logo for embroidery. And there was a couple of guys in the country that knew how to do it. There was real specialized software. We’d have to take our files, put them in designs. People sent us a business card or something in those days. It was really prehistoric. We’d have to put a stamp on the envelope and send it out to the end of Long Island where this guy, August Carvalho, had a business called Designs by August. And he would convert these flat files into embroidery files. And he would send us back a box with an inch and a half tapes that we ran through the embroidery machines, the tape readers with the designs. You know, we would get, we would get busy sometimes. And we would, it would sometimes at the beginning, it would take us six months to get a design digitized because, you know, just backed up. And, uh, Uh, that was responsive in 1982. That was responsive. Um, but, um, you know, today, you know, the, the definition of responsiveness and Amazon has had a huge impact on that, um, has narrowed considerably. And, you know, the idea of, of taking 72 hours to respond to a comment, it’s just unheard of. So it’s, it’s seconds. It’s like, how do you create an organization that’s. instantaneously responsive. Accurately, that’s the thing is it’s got to be accurate, which is the problem with AI is like it’s accurate, you know, I don’t know, 85, 90% of the time, but when it’s wrong, it’s really like embarrassingly stupid. And, you know, you’ve pulled the curtain aside and you’ve shown the world there’s not a real person here. This is somebody behind the machine. You know, it’s always going to happen when it’s, you know, it’s least should happen, but so that’s, you know, that’s, that’s improving your technology. It’s improving the workflow supply chain, you know, just. Pounding on all that stuff. So I don’t know if we’ll ever and be anticipatory, you know, like we can respond to a question before it even comes in, but you know, that’s, that was, that’s kind of the goal is to, you know, anticipate what somebody is going to ask and answer before they even do. That’s a. keep kind of bending towards that dark. So I think that’s the answer to that question.
Greg Kihlstrom: Love it.
Fred Meyers: Yeah.
Greg Kihlstrom: Well, Fred, thanks so much.
Fred Meyers: Combination of yeah. Sorry. Just a combination of man and machine people and machines working together. So sorry. Go ahead. Yeah.
Greg Kihlstrom: Oh yeah.
Fred Meyers: Yeah.
Greg Kihlstrom: No, I love that. Well, yeah, no, Fred, thanks so much for joining today. Um, one last question before we wrap up, I’d like to ask everybody this. What do you do to stay agile in your role and how do you find a way to do it consistently?
Fred Meyers: So, you know, the biggest. Motivator and the biggest check on maintaining your agility is to maintain the relationships that you have with different people in your organization. Not just the ones that you’re working with on a day-to-day basis, my CFO, my marketing guys and stuff like that, but my production employees and my receiving employees, because there’s so many amazing stories in their lives and what they’re doing. You know, whenever you get really busy, as, as you get more and more busy, you, you just have a tendency to pull back, pull back, pull back and silo. And it’s like, if you like to exercise and you stop exercising, you know, you know, you’re doing something wrong. And you gotta, you gotta get back out there. And it’s like, that’s, that’s what keeps you agile. I think as a business owner, as an entrepreneur is maintaining that contact with the various. You know, kind of flavors of the people in your business and, and who’s important. They’re all, you know, everybody obviously has a role to do, but, you know, not just going through the motions, but really connecting with, uh, with people that aren’t necessarily in your lane, your to-do list at the beginning of the day of what you need to do. So that’s, that’s my, my, my kind of secret. And I, I need to be better at it even, you know, for sure. Cause it pays huge dividends. Um, but I’m pretty good at it. Yeah.
Greg Kihlstrom: Nice. Nice. I love it. Well, again, I’d like to thank Fred Myers, president and founder of Queensborough for joining the show. You can learn more about Fred and Queensborough by following the links in the show notes.
