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We are 2 brothers who left corporate jobs to start our own sneaker company. Here's how we found our niche in a market dominated by big brands.

Jan 15, 2024, 21:14 IST
Business Insider
Brandon and Josh Brubaker, co-founders of Clearweather Footwear.Courtesy of Clearweather.
  • After years in the industry, brothers Brandon and Josh Brubaker co-founded Clearweather Footwear.
  • The brothers from California are both designers and run their company with three other employees.
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This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Brandon and Josh Brubaker, who cofounded Clearweather Footwear in 2014. The brothers, ages 50 and 41, respectively, have nearly 50 years of experience in the footwear industry between them, working at Vans, Converse, Supra Footwear, and Quiksilver, among others.

Josh: There's an old saying in footwear where you say to yourself, '"I really like this shoe. I don't know why." That just means it was developed correctly and that all the elements are where they're supposed to be.

Brandon: We're definitely meticulous about that. A line could be off by a couple of millimeters and it throws off the whole shoe, right? We want to be in control of everything from the designs to the look and feel and what they represent when they come out.

Josh: The other hard part is making something feel familiar yet different without copying it. I think that's something that we're both really good at, and it took years of getting there, of going overboard with lines and then trying to remove lines, and place them strategically. We're not inventing anything. We're just trying to be clever and do our craft the way we learned to do it.

Brandon: I had always drawn as a kid, but I didn't really take it seriously. In college, a friend of mine connected with an owner at Vans, who asked if my friend knew anybody who could draw.

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I drew a skate shoe and a snowboard boot, and I faxed it to him. The first guy I interviewed with wanted me to get his coffee and be his gopher, which sounded ridiculous to me. Later, the head of design got ahold of my drawing, called me, and asked me to come back and interview properly. When I did, she said, "I want to hire you. You can still go to school, but I want to give you a position as a junior designer."

My jaw hit the floor. I took the job, and about five months later, they offered me a full-time position. The amount of money that they were going to pay me to draw shoes, I was like, "This is the best thing that's ever happened to me." And I just ran with it.

I ended up working at Vans for eight years, worked my way up through the design team, and ended up working on almost all the signature shoes that were developed during that time and working with skateboarders I admired growing up.

Josh: For me, being his younger brother, I would always ride his coattails. Skateboarding was my first love, and I always liked to draw. I didn't even put two and two together that humans drew shoes until he got the job at Vans. I was in seventh grade, and I got to go in and see how everything worked. It was just inspiring. It opened up a whole new thought process of what I could do with my life.

Brandon: He became a wear-tester for Vans because he was the sample size. He would walk around with signature skate shoes that even the skaters didn't have yet.

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Josh: From seventh grade onward, I drew shoes every night until I got my first job at Quiksilver. I have a big group of friends that I grew up skating with, and they all knew what Brandon was doing because he's my older brother. They call him the Godfather because he basically got us all into the industry.

I think we're the type of people who want to put our friends on, not just because they're our friends, but because they're talented. You want to work with good company and people that you trust.

Brandon: Nobody gets the layup. You have to be damn near the best at what you do for me and Josh to vouch for you.

Josh: There's a reason why you could probably count the major footwear brands on one hand. It's a heritage industry ruled by money and power, the brands within the sneaker world especially. The times have changed. When we were growing up, we always were looking for things that people didn't have. You wanted to be the only one with these shoes. Well, it's totally flipped upside down, and now everyone wants what everyone else has. So that just is more ammo for the majors. The Nike, the Adidas, the Yeezy, the New Balance, the Converse. That's their world.

Being a young brand and trying to compete with them is really difficult because people aren't buying the design because of the design. They're buying it because of the brand and because everyone else has it. It's been an upward battle, and that's why we're trying to scale back into our true roots, which is skateboarding. We've already laid the foundation of who we are: We are going to be the luxury skate brand that also makes lifestyle shoes. We don't want to be too big. We just want to do what we like and be a profitable brand.

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Brandon: Of course, it'd be awesome to be a $200 million company, but do we need to grow it that big? Or do we need to grow it big enough to be a legacy company where eventually our kids work here with us? We have two kids each. Maybe one of them ends up running the company later. It's very much a family business that we're psyched about, and we want to be really true to everybody. This is us. This is what we're putting out.

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