ager, HR, a finance department, a marketing room—five people in marketing. The bulk of our warehouse is our inventory of jeans. I would say now our company is 80 percent denim; we primarily sell jeans. Another department is production; we still have a small screen-printing division. It's called the Signature line. It's pretty much custom ordered. We offer 40 different designs three times a year, through catalogs, and it's cus- tomized. It's staying in touch with the roots where we started from. It's a fast turnover, creative line. In 24 hours we can have a new blank t-shirt with a new material. It's a fast, creative piece, whereas when we import we're working a year out. For the jeans it's one year from the time I come up with a design to the time it delivers to a store. Rev- enue in 2010 was $7.8 million. We introduced the jeans in 2008, and that's when the growth started.
Upsize: Why did you think selling jeans was a good idea?
Bollin: Just myself, I had a tough time find- ing jeans that were comfortable and fit good. And everybody was telling me why I shouldn't do it, and that does attract me. It's kind of in my blood that way, the competitive edge. It's in my makeup, I guess.
Upsize: Where else do you show that edge, or is it only in business?
Bollin: Barrel-racing. I grew up with horses, in Litchfield. We had backyard kind of horses. I don't come from a highly com- petitive horse family, and I guess because I didn't get that as a child, I wanted it, because we couldn't afford it back then. When I got older and got married, I started buying horses because now I can have them. My husband was supportive. I was in my late 20s when I started barrel-racing.
Upsize: Isn't that late to start barrel-racing? What's the attraction?
Bollin: It's an adrenaline rush, and work- ing something so hard and your teammate is an animal with its own brain and its own thoughts. It's challenging. You tip a barrel and you're out. They put up three cans, and they're approximately 60 to 80 feet apart, and you have to make a cloverleaf pattern
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around them, as fast as you can without tipping them over. And you could be up against 80 other girls that want to win the same thing.
Upsize: Your company has a great slogan. Share it.
Bollin: "Even though you've been bucked, kicked, bit and stomped, never give up."
Upsize: When did you think of that slogan?
Bollin: I could go back eight, nine years ago. I was out selling my products as a retailer. I'm driving up and down the road, and I believe it was an event I did in Starkville, Mississippi. It cost me $1,200 to do the event. I sold 1,201 dollars' worth.
Upsize: Oh. Depressing.
Bollin: Yeah, but I took it as a sign. That was frustrating. I was about to give up. It's just a hard road to do, being away from my family. And I got home and tried to make a decision to make this work or am I going to give up. Just late at night it came to me. It was kind of a horse thing. I thought, I'm never going to give up on this. I'm going to keep going because tomorrow could be the change of everything. It was coming from a barrel- racer perspective. I don't give up on that, so I'm not going to give up on my business.
Upsize: Did that moment also set you on a path to eventually launch the jeans, and change your company to something that could be much more successful?
Bollin: I don't know that I thought of it at that time. As it kept evolving, I had to keep changing. That's an important thing I know about fashion is you have to keep chang- ing. You have to be one step ahead of your competition. And just always trying to get better, learn more. It's been a constant. Every day here just growing the company is learning, evolving. Evolving and change are huge words around here.
Upsize: But how do your employees feel about that? Most people resist change.
Bollin: We talk about it all the time. The ones that have stayed with me and are
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THE GROWTH GUIDE 2012 UPSIZE ONLINE 7
