LESSONS IN: MARKETING
Dude, where’s my hoodie?
Laid-back student taps local zeitgeist, aces business school, chills with Obama
By Stephen Kimber

IT WAS THE FALL of 2010, and Alex MacLean’s life plan had not worked out exactly as planned. He’d enrolled at Acadia University the fall before to study biology, step one on his path to medical school where he intended to specialize in sports medicine and, ultimately, work with NHL players and other elite athletes.

But he discovered biology wasn’t his thing. Neither was football. He’d spent freshman year as a defensive end, being “groomed” — thanks to a full-meal-deal residence food plan — for a future as a defensive lineman. “I gained 30 pounds.”

He decided he needed to make some changes. He would eat “healthier.” And he would explore other academic possibilities.

He signed up for some business courses. Better, but not yet a cigar. He excelled in marketing, but math-oriented courses like stats and finance stumped him.

Then, in third year, he enrolled in a course called Venture Creation. It was a small class — just eight students — that only met once a month. Students were required to read three business books, including The Lean Start Up by Eric Ries, then create a business or — more likely — a business plan using its bare-bones approach to venture creation.

Maclean wanted his to be a real business — but what kind of business? He considered himself part of the laid-back surfer culture… Mellow Clothing Company? No. He also considered himself a proud Nova Scotian, and wanted his business to reflect that: like the famous St. F.X. “X” rings, for example, but targeted at a broader audience. Or maybe a line of clothing like Roots Canada… But Roots’ national focus “didn’t do it for us for the east coast.”

What about East Coast… Lifestyle? Yes.

Although he confesses he had “barely any” Adobe skills, Maclean quickly created a text-only logo on his computer. With an $800 loan from his father — his father, admits MacLean, was “confused” since his son had never before expressed any particular interest in clothing — MacLean immediately bought $40 worth of stickers bearing his new logo at Staples. He pasted them on street signs and trash cans all over Wolfville. He ordered 30 East Coast Lifestyle hoodies from a Spryfield, N.S., embroidery shop, instantly sold all of them, mostly to friends, and then ordered another 60 to satisfy the demand he had created.

He got an A on the course.

By the summer of 2013, MacLean had created a new and improved logo — an anchor inside a circle he’d sketched out during a Florida family vacation — and was juggling a summer marketing internship at Atlantic Lottery while peddling his clothing, now including summer T-shirts, from a rack on his mother’s Halifax front lawn. He used social media — mainly Facebook and Twitter, along with emails to friends — to advertise his “mom shop.”

“It was insane.” Suddenly, there were line-ups around the block and he was selling 200 T-shirts a day. That generated more interest — and free publicity — from local media, which in turn attracted the notice of a local Pseudio clothing store outlet. “They said, ‘We’ll take 15 of your hoodies… kid,” he jokes. “I couldn’t believe it.”

The store managers couldn’t believe it either when the hoodies sold out within an hour. They ordered 200 more and gave them prominent window display in their mall outlet. And the rest, as they say, is history that is still happening and evolving by the day.

Today — just two years after he began working the business full time (he completed his degree online) — MacLean, now 24, has sold 750,000 units: hoodies, T-shirts, tank tops, tuques, baby onesies, even jewelry and logo shopping bags, in dozens of styles, many of them limited edition, to customers in 55 countries, many of them online. His gear is on the shelves in 78 Canadian retail outlets, including his own Halifax waterfront and airport locations, not to mention traveling “pop-up shops” that set up at summer festivals and events.

Though he doesn’t want to talk specifics, he acknowledges ECL has “easily” crossed the $10 million sales threshold. He employs 16 people, including both his younger sisters. “My grandmother does some art design,” he adds proudly, and says his father, a dentist who does public speaking on the side, makes a point of wearing his son’s clothing on his travels.

The keys to his success?

Perhaps surprisingly, given his business’s beginnings, MacLean gives less credit than you might expect to his business school training. “I learned 75 per cent of what I know since I left school.” He wonders why business schools don’t spend more time on trademarks. These days, MacLean spends a lot of lawyer time and money protecting his brand from knock-offs, including from big companies like H&M — and other practical matters he believes wannabe entrepreneurs need to understand.

Although MacLean has clearly tapped into a rich celebrate-whereyou’re- from pride, much of his success can be credited to probably unteachable personal qualities: his own cheerful hustle… and chutzpah.

Consider just some of the celebrities photographed wearing his gear: hockey players Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Brad Marchand, Jason Spezza, Adam McQuaid and the entire Halifax Mooseheads hockey team; musicians Wu-Tang Clan, Classified, James Taylor; actor Kim Coates from the Sons of Anarchy; and comedian Kenan Thompson (who wore his during a Saturday Night Live credit roll)…

MacLean is quick to point out he’s never paid anyone to wear his clothing. Some, in fact, like Crosby, have occasionally sported East Coast Lifestyle clothing even though they’re under contract to other much bigger makers.

MacLean even tried — and failed — to give U.S. President Barack Obama some East Coast swag. He was at the White House last spring for a presentation after being named first runner-up in a global young entrepreneurs’ competition. But he did manage to score an autographed photo of the U.S. president, which hangs on the wall in his office — the “Captain’s Quarters” — in ECL’s laid-back Halifax headquarters above another autographed photo, this one of young hockey star Jonathan Drouin.

East Coast Lifestyle may also have come along at exactly the right social media moment. Besides huge followings on Twitter and Facebook, which help drive traffic to its online store, ECL’s Instragam account, with more than 190,000 followers, features not only celebrity photos but also candid snaps of real people wearing their gear, “reppin’” where they’re from at the Wall of China and other exotic locales.

ECL’s Instagram account also documents the company’s generosity. Soon after the company launched, MacLean handed out free shirts to 100 residents at a local homeless shelter. He has provided clothing to Bryony House, a shelter for women and children fleeing abuse, and to Syrian refugees. Before Christmas 2015, ECL’s Halifax store contributed $2 from every sale to the local food bank. And $2 from every ECL camo hoodie sold goes directly to the Wounded Warriors veterans’ charity. Maclean, who estimates the company gives five to 10 per cent of its profits to various worthy causes — much of it unpublicized — credits his mother with instilling that need to give back. It also, he acknowledges, doesn’t hurt brand loyalty. “I think people like to know you’re giving back.”

East Coast Lifestyle’s future possibilities seem limitless. Although primarily still a Canadian phenomenon, MacLean is quick to rhyme off the numbers of potential proud-to-be-where-they’re-from customers residing on assorted “east coasts” in other countries: 115 million in the United States, 60 million in Japan, 35 million in Australia.

In the spring — to cover all downhome bases — he’ll roll out a new line of West Coast Lifestyle clothing.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Mac- Lean has had more than a few expressions of interest from wannabe investors. He’s cautious. “I want to keep control.” Ironically, for someone who’s won more than his share of young entrepreneur honours, MacLean says he doesn’t have a business mentor of his own. “When I need to talk to someone, I talk to my dad.”

That said, his ultimate goal is to create his own entrepreneurship organization to provide mentoring and free entrepreneurship programs to youth in Atlantic Canada. “We’re the underdogs of Canada” he says, “and yet we’re ready to embrace entrepreneurship.”

In Alex MacLean’s entrepreneur school, he says with a smile, “there will be no math courses. The goal will be to teach ‘hustle.’”

Alex MacLean has already learned that lesson very well.

Next: Lessons in financing