Jarrod Dogan stalks the hallways of his T-shirt company’s 60,000-square-foot Cypress headquarters.
The founder of Hybrid Promotions LLC is on the hunt for Doogie, his 5-year-old Chihuahua mix.
“Doogie!” Dogan calls. “Where’s Doogie?”
Then Dogan whistles as the sound of a jingling dog tag and thudding paws nears.
The small brown and white dog zips through the hallway and scrambles into a doghouse in Dogan’s office. He peaks his head out and stares at Dogan with wide brown eyes.
“There’s Doogie!” Dogan exclaims, scooping the dog into his arms and cradling him like a baby.
Dogan belts out a series of howls. Doogie, with ears perked and eyes half-closed, tilts his head back and croons along.
It’s just another day at the office at Hybrid Promotions.
Dogan and cofounder Jeff Caldwell prefer to run Hybrid in an unconventional way, they say.
“We’re laid back here,” Caldwell said.
The company’s some 70 employees wear jeans and T-shirts. Rock music blares from Hybrid’s design studio, where its team of 25 artists creates funky graphics for T-shirts and hooded sweatshirts sold by J.C. Penney Corp., Kohl’s Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Tilly’s Inc., Zumiez Inc. and Delia’s Inc.
Pets, obviously, are allowed.
“Doogie comes with me to work everyday,” Dogan said.
Hybrid got its start about five years ago out of a spare bedroom in Dogan’s Hollywood home. It now generates more than $100 million in yearly sales making T-shirts and hoodies under the brands Hybrid, Bitter Sweet, Cage Rage, Three Counts and Power of Art.
Hybrid has carved a niche in the competitive clothing business by catering to Middle America with artsy T-shirts that sell from $10 to $20 at national retailers.
Competitors include Los Angeles-based Fortune Fashions Industries LLC and Commerce-based Giant Merchandising Inc.
Hybrid makes T-shirts and hoodies for toddlers, boys, men and teen girls. The clothes come in a variety of colors with graphics of skulls, stars, hearts, graffiti, tattoo-style art and cars.
The clothes are designed in Cypress and produced at factories in Asia and other parts of the world. They’re sent to screen printers in Orange County that are hired to bang out Hybrid’s designs, Caldwell said.
The company opts to use local screen printers because of their quality and convenience, he said.
Most of Hybrid’s clothes are shipped from screen printers to stores. The company keeps a backup supply of T-shirts and hoodies on hand at its headquarters, according to Gavin Dogan, director of merchandising and sales.
Hybrid typically ships about 4 million shirts per month, he said.
About 40% of Hybrid’s business is making shirts for its own brands. Thirty percent comes from designing shirts for retailers who sell the clothes under their own labels.
Another 30% of the business is dedicated to making clothes under license from companies such as World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. and Miller Brewing Co.
Outsourcing production and warehousing helps keep costs down, according to Caldwell.
Manufacturing its own products would take too much money, Dogan said.
“We’re art driven,” he said. “We focus on what we do best, which is design.”
Clothing Experience
Dogan and Caldwell have backgrounds in clothes.
Dogan grew up working for his father’s clothing company, MD International, in South Africa. He said he dreamt of starting his own one day.
On a family trip to Southern California in his early 20s, Dogan fell in love with the area’s cultural diversity, beaches and lifestyle, he said.
“I loved everything about it,” he said.
Shortly after graduating from college, Dogan was carjacked in South Africa.
The incident left him with head injuries, stitches and a longing to flee South Africa for a new life in America.
He moved to Los Angeles in 1996 and a year later started a T-shirt company called Mixology with the backing of a screen-printing company in Los Angeles.
In 2001, Dogan met Caldwell, who then was a buyer for Ontario-based Anchor Blue Retail Group Inc.
Caldwell kicked off his career in the business working at Anchor Blue’s predecessor, Miller’s Outpost, through high school and college. He worked his way up to become a manager and eventually a buyer.
When Dogan hit a rough patch with his investors at Mixology, he decided to sell his stake in the company and start a new venture in 2003.
He turned to Caldwell to become a partner.
Dogan said he thought his experience in clothing production and Caldwell’s retail savvy would help the two create a well-run business.
Leaving a steady income to become his own boss was a tough decision to make, Caldwell said.
But “when you’re working at a big company it’s basically just meetings after meetings and only getting a few things accomplished,” he said. “We wanted to run this business as a small company so that we could react quickly.”
Tough Start
Getting started wasn’t easy.
Dogan and Caldwell pooled together what money they had to get their business off the ground.
Caldwell, a husband and father of a newborn son, took out a home equity loan and borrowed money from his mother to help finance the company’s early stages.
For six months, Dogan and Caldwell couldn’t afford to pay themselves, they said.
They worked their contacts in clothing and retail to make inroads with manufacturers and potential customers, Dogan said.
The two ran Hybrid out of Dogan’s home for several months before leasing a 4,000-square-foot building in Santa Fe Springs. The company outgrew the location in a couple of years and moved into an 8,000-square-foot building in Santa Fe Springs.
By 2006, Hybrid was on the lookout for a bigger building. They had their 60,000-square-foot building built in Cypress and have been there since.
But now Hybrid is on the hunt for another building in OC that will be used for warehousing and distribution, Dogan said.
“We’ve grown so much in the last few years that we’re running out of space,” he said.
This year could be a different story.
Hybrid, like many other companies, rode the economic boom of the past few years but now faces a spending slowdown and rising costs that have hit retailers and clothing companies hard.
“We have to be very careful about how we run our business and we need to be on top of everything,” Dogan said. “It’s about managing costs.”
The partners plan to invest in new software to run more efficiently, Caldwell said.
Hybrid has received buyout offers but the two partners aren’t ready to give up ownership just yet, they said.
The company plans to buy smaller companies this year so that it can add more products and brands, Dogan said.
“When you do these things you’re in great shape when the economy looks up,” Caldwell said.
