how i built the out the back van
why i bought an empty cargo van for my surf brand with no plan, and how it ended up on the floor at surf expo eighteen months later.
people ask about the van more than anything else i’ve built. not the brand, not the warehouse, not the tv show. the van. so here’s the real story, including the part where it was an empty metal box.
why a surf brand needs a van
out the back started in april 2021. i was 20, printing tees out of my usc dorm. a surf brand with no shop, no booth, and no money for either.
the problem with an online-only clothing brand is that nobody touches it. you can’t try on a hoodie through a screen. and the people i wanted to reach weren’t on my website. they were at the beach.
a storefront in boca was out of the question. a van wasn’t. it moves. it holds a rack of product. and when it’s parked at the beach on a good day, it’s the best billboard i’ll ever own.
the empty box
i bought it empty. no build-out, no shelving, no wrap. my plan was two words long: this will work.
i’m not going to pretend there was a blueprint. there wasn’t. there was a cargo van, some boxes of hoodies, and the idea that if i showed up enough times, people would start showing up too.
that’s the part i want you to hear if you’re building something. the ugly version is allowed. the empty van is allowed. you don’t need the finished thing to start acting like you have it.
what it turned into
the van became three things i didn’t plan for.
the surf club. florida is wave-starved, so when a swell shows up, people want to be in the water together. i started with the van and a text thread. free surf days, boards for anyone, a van full of hoodies. now hundreds of people show up. the brand is the excuse. the people are the point.
the road. we took it up the east coast and boca raton magazine wrote about it. the crew in front of the van is still my favorite photo of the brand. the van tour deserves its own post, so i’ll save it.
the floor at surf expo. eighteen months after i bought it empty, the same van was on the show floor in orlando with the whole brand hanging inside it. a team, dude the dog, a rack of product, and buyers walking up. nothing about the van changed as much as what was in it.
presence beats polish
here’s what the van taught me about building a brand. showing up in person, over and over, does more than a perfect website ever will.
out the back now runs its own paid media, a 30-creator affiliate team, and wholesale accounts. the brand is on the wall in retail. all of that came after people could touch the product and meet the person behind it. the van was how they did both.
and the van made the brand real to me too. when you’ve packed hoodies into the back of it at 6am and driven to the beach for the fourth weekend in a row, you stop treating the thing like a side project.
what came next
the warehouse in boca came after the van, and the warehouse parties came after that. same idea, bigger box. that’s a post for another week.
if you’re sitting on an idea and waiting until it looks finished, this is me telling you it never will. buy the empty van. show up ugly. keep showing up.
that’s basically the first month of the mentorship. you pick the one thing, you start it before you’re ready, and i make sure you don’t stop.