Talking to Gina Thorsen, Stormy Kromer President and Co-Owner

David Haynes sits down with Gina Thorsen, President and Co-Owner of Stormy Kromer, one of the most well-known and successful UP brands and manufacturers–most notably for the original Stormy Kromer cap.

Thorsen discusses her background having been born and raised in Ironwood, how her career got started, some of the unique aspects of the Stormy Kromer company, and her perspective on some of the issues facing the rural UP.

Transcript

David Haynes:

Welcome everybody, to another addition of Rural Insights Podcast. I’m David Haynes.

 Today, we’re thrilled to be with the President of Stormy Kromer, Gina Thorsen.

They’ve got a lot of exciting, new things going on. And as everyone who lives [inaudible 00:00:21] has ever been knows what Stormy Kromer is. So, and around the world. So I was going to start with Gina. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about you and your life at Stormy Kromer, how you got there and stuff like that?

Gina Thorsen:

Sure. Thanks for having me on to chat today. So I was born and raised here in Ironwood, so I’m a Yooper kid, and grew up in a family business. So when I was a young person, we just had our sewing factory that my grandpa had started, my dad was running. We didn’t have Stormy Kromer as a part of it quite yet. So I grew up around an entrepreneur and hanging out on Saturdays with my sister and I with my dad at the shop and just really experiencing family business. However, when I was a young person, I was not interested in the family business at all. And I wanted to go to a big city and make my mark on the world. I was very into the arts as a kid. And so I ended up getting a degree in arts administration from the UW-Stevens Point and ended up finding my way to Texas, actually with my husband.

And I lived in Dallas, Texas for about 12 years after college and had my career in arts administration and had a great time. And then both the Midwest and the business started tugging at my heart a little bit. And my husband was also a Midwesterner, he’s from Milwaukee. And so we started to think that maybe being back in the business and back in this area was something that we both really wanted. So in 2009, we moved back. We actually live across the border in Northern Wisconsin, about half an hour from Ironwood now. And I joined the business and we had the business had purchased Stormy Kromer in 2001. And so when I came on, it was still we’d had it for a while, but it was still in the very much growth period. And so I was great to come alongside my dad and just be a part of the business and help to see what we can do with this brand. And also the rest of our sewing factory as well, which is still going strong too.

David Haynes:

Well, when I was president of Northern, I had the opportunity to tour your facilities with your dad.

Gina Thorsen:

Yeah.

David Haynes:

It was a really, really fascinating experience of what you do. So one of the things that I understand you’ve done is you’ve led the expansion into a clothing line. Is that an accurate, am I saying that correctly?

Gina Thorsen:

Yeah, I would say into, into a number of different categories. When I came back, there were a few apparel pieces, but there were pretty focused at one kind of customer and we didn’t have really an apparel designer on staff. And so we had, we were kind of putting things together with different outside resources to help us with design and see what’s out in the marketplace that we could do. I mean, it’s always a challenge about what we can produce in America that’s going to be competitive, price point wise. And so it’s, there’s always this dance around that. And we really led into the first kind of thing that I did was to find in a closet, find a hat with kind of a crude flower attached to it. And I said, “What’s this dad?”

“Oh, it was an idea, but it never went anywhere. It was your mom’s idea.” So she’s not even in the business just, but she’s got great style and sense of things. And so that became what is known as The Petal Pusher Cap right now, which is our best selling cap for women. And it really marked, I would say first our push into being more than just a man’s brand. I would say that’s kind of the first expansion was really into including women.

And then we did bring on a designer who I’ve been working really closely with the last few years to really expand the apparel into being much more competitive apparel wise. And then the other expansion category I like to talk about is, I don’t know if it was 16 or 15, I don’t know something like that, but we added our pet collection, which was really exciting as well to start doing pet products. So when we bought the company, it was just a single hat and we’ve just really broadened the product line over the last 10 years to be appealing to a lot more people and a lot more demographics.

David Haynes:

I’m getting unmute. Are you still in the sail business? Do you ever do anything in that line? Isn’t that what the original cutting was?

Gina Thorsen:

I’m sorry, the what kind of business?

David Haynes:

Sail, S-A-I-L. Didn’t you do sails? No, huh?

Gina Thorsen:

We do no, not sails, but big part of our original sewing company was doing like custom boat covers and things of that [inaudible 00:05:36].

David Haynes:

Okay. That’s what it was, yeah.

Gina Thorsen:

Yeah. And, and we do, we don’t do as much of that anymore because really our operation has turned more into a high volume, higher volume, not high volume, like overseas, but higher volume versus custom kind of things. Yeah.

David Haynes:

So, how many people work for you?

Gina Thorsen:

We have right around a hundred employees right now here in Ironwood. We’ve got two buildings worth and we’ve got a bunch of really hardworking folks here that are making this happen.

David Haynes:

And your pet line, which my wife and I love since we have dogs and cats. How has that been as a lot, has that caught on?

Gina Thorsen:

It has been very good. Of course, in our direct to consumer sales on our website, people just, anything cute for their dog is an easy sell. And it seems like there’s lots of, it’s just like our hats for little ones sell really well, mommy and daughter, and it’s also mommy and their dog. Look at matching is a big thing. We’ve had some success in the last couple of years with some larger chain stores that we work with particularly in the west, kind of more like farm and ranch kind of stores picking up our pet line pretty broadly as well. So we’ve seen some nice expansion even on the wholesale side of the business with that line.

David Haynes:

So as business that’s been in the U.P. a long time, what are some of the challenges you think will face you in a coming decade? As well as other businesses, but that you see as a leading business in the Upper Peninsula.

Gina Thorsen:

Right. I bet every business in the Upper Peninsula would talk about talent, right? As a challenge upcoming. And we are, I think we face… it’s kind of unique in a couple of ways. There aren’t a lot of people sitting around with sewing skills already, right? It’s a kind of a unique skill that isn’t out there and our growth it right now is starting to outpace our capacity here in Ironwood. And there’s just some realities about the number of people we will have in Gogebic County to do that work. And we’re committed to keeping at least the majority of the product line in the United States. And so we’ve had to get a little more creative about trying to partner with some other factories in lower Michigan, in Wisconsin, in other places, because I think that specifically the production capacity and the talent piece to do the production is going to be a challenge for us.

And then I think everyone’s got supply chain on their mind, as well as we look at our raw materials that come from all over the world to put in the hands of our very talented sewing machine operators. How to get those, how easily we can get them, how much the prices are going up on our raw materials. All of those things I think are really significant challenges, but I don’t know that I think they’re pretty common in 2022 and inflation and all those kinds of things.

Like I said, right now, we’re seeing just some really good growth and our challenge is going to be to keep up with it. And then to be able to weather any storms that come with the economy. I think that’s another big concern I have as a leader is thinking about, are we headed for some kind of downturn in the economy? And you can get various opinions on that from the experts out there, but we’re just trying to balance some risks we’re taking as a business that investments and risks in order to grow with also being prudent for what might come down the road.

David Haynes:

So obviously we’ve heard this week that if has it 8.5% people’s costs are buying beef and chicken and buying gasoline for automobile. Those kind of inflation issues are part of that supply chain issue for you? The cost of the product?

Gina Thorsen:

For sure. Yeah. And also the cost of freight that’s going up so much just to move product has really gotten quite expensive. And also labor increases we’ve… when we were experiencing inflation like that, that means that our employees’ dollars aren’t going as far. And so we’ve been making some investments in salaries and wages and need to keep doing that as the situation changes. But that all is a part of the puzzle. When we look at the final price of things.

David Haynes:

Is childcare a problem over in the Ironwood area.

Gina Thorsen:

Yeah. I think childcare is a problem everywhere in the U.P. It definitely is a challenge. And it’s been obviously with the pandemic challenging. There aren’t that many childcare providers. And so when one was shut down for two weeks, because of COVID, it impacted a number of employees here because there aren’t that many options. We had one administrative department that the whole department was knocked out for a couple, several times during COVID because the daycare was closed. And so all of that is getting more flexible with work and how people can work and when they can work and making it just managing it.

David Haynes:

So what is… I’m sort of big into SWOT analysis? My last question is, what do you think are the opportunities for you in the next few years? What are the when you look at it, you go, that is a great opportunity for…

Gina Thorsen:

For sure.

David Haynes:

…with this company.

Gina Thorsen:

I think one of our opportunities that we’re in the middle of, and we’ve been really focused on being poised to take advantage of is the fact that we are made here. We have been able to stay in stock with product a lot more consistently than some of our competition in the outdoor clothing world. So we’re hearing from a lot of the stores and things that buy our products that they in last fall in the cold, when they need products like ours and other companies, they weren’t able to things from other suppliers. And we were there with the product. It wasn’t perfect, because we had some of our own issues where, like I said, we’re growing fast. And so we were out of some things, but for the most part, we’ve been able to stay in stock with product in our core time of the year, pretty solidly, which means those retailers know they can get product from us.

And once we heard from quite a number of retailers, well, I can’t get product from such and such. So I’d like to, I’ve never bought coats from you before, but I need coats in my store. So I’m going to buy these coats from you ’cause you have some. And then our opportunity and our challenge is to keep that floor space that we were able to take. ‘Cause I think there’s a real opportunity with some of our competition, us being able to just outperform them on a customer service level with some of our retailers. And also there’s some other brands who were traditionally known for kind of very traditional wool, outdoor clothing who have changed their products line and the customer that they’re targeting. And so they’ve left a gap in the marketplace like Woolrich for example, has really changed the look and feel and even target customer of their products. It’s not the sort of traditional American look that you would think of.

And so we see that as a big opportunity that they’re leaving a gap in the marketplace that we can design product that fills some of those holes and develop into some of those categories and be there for customers to buy from. And then I would say the last thing is just the pandemic has given us two opportunities. One people moving to outdoor activities. So there’s been such a large increase, for example, in hunting license sales and things like that we are able are poised to respond to people’s needs when they’re outside. And then just being ready to keep getting better and better at e-commerce and understanding that world is more and more people shift to online shopping. So those are a lot of the positives we’re looking at.

David Haynes:

Well, thank you very much. That’s really exciting. And not only good news for Stormy Kromer, but for the Upper Peninsula, all the people that work with you and use your products.

Gina Thorsen:

Yes.

David Haynes:

Thank you. Gina Thorsen, President of Stormy Kromer for spending this time with us. We really appreciate it.

Gina Thorsen:

Great. Thank you.