Makers - ENNEF Design

Imagine that you have decades of experience in your field. You understand how the business works, and you also know how to design and produce a quality product that fills a hole in the market - made by hand, locally. You pour your heart and soul into creating a brand, invest a lot of your own money, and a hell of a lot of your time and energy. Your partner is all in. You're both committed. At first it's hard, but there are glimmers of hope. First time customers turn into repeat customers. Your social media channels start to generate a legitimate buzz. If you can just satisfy the steadily growing demand for your product, everything will unfold before you. But it turns out you can't, because your product takes time to create by hand, and because you can't find enough qualified hands. You rely on highly-skilled workers, but you can't find more. Every time you release new inventory to the website, it sells out in minutes, or hours. Some people think you're making your product scarce on purpose. Imagine having that luxury as a business owner. Still, the problem persists. Your brand is built on being local and made by hand - this is unheard of in the world of apparel, where a typical season's collection has a shelf life of mere months before it's blown out in discount sales and sent to the garbage in massive numbers. What do you do?

Starting any kind of business is full of challenges, but sometimes getting through year one only means you've cleared the small hurdles, only to find yourself facing progressively larger ones. In this episode of Makers, we sit down with Travis and Ying Bothner, the duo behind ENNEF Design, to learn about the brand's beginnings, the situation at present, and a little bit about the future.

Check out the rest of the MAKERS Series:

Paul Brodie - the Original
Roberts Composites - Carbon CAN be repaired
Canadian Made Carbon: The We Are One Arrival
We Are One Composites ep. 1
We Are One Composites ep. 2
Chromag - Cult of the Hardtail
North Shore Billet

The Makers Series was made with the participation of the Government of Canada.