This was a year like no other. 2020 brought protests and wildfires and a divisive election all under the umbrella of a global pandemic. It forced us to hunker down and rely on a healthy dose of resilience. We found ways to work together and workout at home. We discovered new passions while self-isolating. And here at Olivers, we heard from customers who relied on our gear to keep them going. As we wrap up the year and set our eyes on 2021, we want to look back and celebrate the wins big and small, and share them with the community that makes it all possible. Here’s to a happy and healthy New Year.
- David Wolfe
Founder/CEO
This Year’s Highlights
We shipped to 38 countries this year: Arigatou to our fans in Japan, Merci bien to our loyal customers in France, danke schön to all of you in Austria and Shalom to our friends in Israel!
We overhauled our web experience to make shopping on oliversapparel.com faster and easier. The new site is achieving a 280% increase in speed on mobile and a 150% increase on desktop. Since the re-launch, we’ve saved Olivers web users 3,921,276 seconds - which is equivalent to 1,089 hours or 45 days!
Olivers was mentioned in the press over 60 times. From GQ, Forbes and InsideHook to HiConsumption and Valet, print and digital publications gave us some much appreciated love.
We launched a range of new products. After 12+ months of research and development, we were excited to finally release the City Oxford, Alpine Thermal and Compass Pant into the world. We also introduced the Classic Series of sweats and a collection of new accessories like the Merino Crew Sock and the Olivers Field Cap.
We donated 10% of April’s profits to the Gary Sinise COVID-19 Relief Foundation, supporting first responders in need of personal protective equipment when answering service calls during this unprecedented pandemic.
We published over 24 new articles on our relaunched and revamped editorial hub, The Playbook. Have you read them all?
We collaborated with our Ambassador community to bring you the #WFHPlaybook series for 12 weeks of at-home workouts.
We debuted a shopping option within our Instagram hub. This allows our audience to discover new products while they scroll and buy them without ever having to leave the app.
Photo: @logan_grubbs_
We celebrated our 7th birthday. Read a bit more about the short that started it all in ‘These Shorts Don’t Quit’ on the Playbook.
Favorite moment using your Olivers gear in 2020?
Like nearly everyone, I had to shift to working out from home this year. Thankfully, Onnit, an Austin-based gym has a whole series of kettlebell workouts, so I downloaded a few packs of classes and have been working out through their program, in addition to some parking lot workouts at my local gym, Pharos in Echo Park. I’ve been getting a lot of use out of our Pivot tees (both short and long sleeve), and of course the All Over Shorts.
How did the pandemic change your plans for this past year?
It threw us for a loop, no doubt. A lot of our in-person aspirations had to be tabled. But we were fortunate in a lot of ways. Our business was able to stay open and we were able to ship products to customers that needed new gear. Thankfully, we don’t have any of our own brick and mortar stores and our business is nearly 100% direct-to-consumer. It felt like a benefit in this environment. Our path has always been methodical and targeted and in this situation, that worked out.
What were some of the top products this year?
It’s been interesting to see what products performed well this year. Some made sense, as people started reassessing their lifestyle choices. Like the Bradbury Jogger made huge gains this year - it’s such a great quarantine piece. But the shorter length AOS (5.5”) did really well too, which was a bit surprising. We couldn’t have predicted that. And we'd actually been working on the classic sweats series before the pandemic hit, so the timing on the release of those proved fortuitous. I’m hopeful that we can continue to deliver for our community in 2021 and beyond.
