March 9, 2015
TKC: What made you want to start this business?
Cole Matheis: We all started doing different things in Mr. Nixon’s Start Up class, then continued through Mr. Bunton’s Intro to Marketing class, where we started talking about creating our business. While we were figuring out what to do, we saw Adam Kohl’s previous success in selling Kirkwood socks, so we thought apparel was the right way to go for us.
TKC: How did you come up with this idea?
Cole Mechelke: We were just brainstorming names and we were just throwing out ideas. Then the name Trident popped up and it stuck.
TKC: What is your advice to other students who want to start their own business?
Adam Kohl: When starting, get a group of people who all excel in different fields. This way every task can be accomplished as efficiently as possible. Also, never give up on an idea; just find different ways to approach it. At times this process might get rough, but in the end all the work that goes into it really does pay off.
TKC: What have been some challenges of the process and what did you learn from them?
Matheis: We have had distribution problems, and we have accepted that we are going to have to trust other people to be able to get our product out in places where we are not able to.
TKC: How do you generate new ideas to keep customers coming back?
Mechelke: We have taken surveys to figure out what people are looking for. From there we develop logos and figure out through our surveys what would be most appealing to our customers.
TKC: What is your most successful advertising tool?
Mechelke: We do all of our advertising through Twitter because for us it is the most useful means of getting information to people, plus it costs us literally nothing.
TKC:What is the best part about having your own business?
Kohl: The best part of having our own business is seeing people wearing what you have created and having people be impressed about what you are doing. It is easily the most fulfilling part of having our business.
TKC: How far do you see your company going?
Kohl: We want to keep this going until people do not want to wear our clothes anymore, but we hope that will not happen anytime soon.
TKC: What makes your business successful?
Matheis: We are successful because we truly enjoy what we do, and every part of growing this business is fun to us.
TKC: What makes you stand out from other companies?
Kohl: We stand out from other businesses because our company has a different message.
TKC: Where can students purchase your items?
Mechelke: They can buy from our website tridentclothingcompany.com and through Twitter by messaging us. You can follow us at @ClothesTrident on Twitter.
photo courtesy of Trident Clothing
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