We had the good fortune of connecting with Alex Bourdeau and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Alex, we’d love to hear more about how you thought about starting your own business?
I always had ambitions to start my own business but I never knew what form it would take. One day in 2021 a good friend and fellow Texas Longhorn fan called me up right after his first daughter was born. “I have an idea” he said. “You know how you have to put mittens on babies to keep from scratching themselves?” I immediately understood this need because I had to deal with similar scratching issues when my first daughter was born 3 months prior . “Well, wouldn’t it be funny if the mittens were in a Hook ’em Horns sign?… I can’t find them anywhere! Should we try making them?” And that was the start of the Day1Fans.com journey. Although we had no experience in baby apparel, we felt that with enough determination, resourcefulness, and guidance from others, we could make and sell the mittens. It took us almost 1.5 years from that phone call to start selling mittens broadly due to all the upfront learning, testing, and iterating we had to go through. So the thought process behind starting this business really boils down to discovering an unmet need and then deciding to try and fill it on our own.

What should our readers know about your business?
Our business Day1Fans.com makes and sells officially licensed baby mittens for fans. Our slogan is “where fans are born”. Our goal is to put a smile on anyone that sees a baby wearing our products. We decided to call our mittens FanMitts™ since that name embodies both the product description, mittens, and our target customer, fans! Our most popular selling mittens are our Texas Longhorn “Hook ’em” FanMitts. We hope to expand from college to professional teams eventually.

We primarily sell our products directly from our website Day1Fans.com and we occasionally participate in local market fairs in the DFW area like “Main Street Fest” in Grapevine or “Christmas in Cowtown” which is coming up in October. We have a few retail partners that also sell our mittens in their retail store or website.

Starting the business was a challenge in several ways. First, we had no experience in the apparel industry. Second, time and resources were limited since we had new babies at home to care for. Third, our product was dependent on getting University licensing approval, which we learned can be very difficult.

We overcame the challenges through research, getting guidance from other people willing to share their time and expertise, and persistence. We have a team motto of “constant, steady pressure” because we’ve found sometimes doors only open from that type of approach, instead of opening them through brute force or just waiting. Trial and error has been another key approach for making forward progress. We rarely know the best decision upfront so this helps us test, learn, and improve. This approach also keeps us from getting discouraged, since we know that not every decision we make will work out as we want.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Favorite spot in the city would be White Rock Lake where you can experience a little bit of nature without having to drive far outside the city. It offers great walking and bike trails, dog park, fishing, boating, playscapes, and other outdoor activities (if it’s not too hot!). If I had visitors from out of town, I’d take them to the Arboretum on the southern side of the lake where they have beautiful gardens, activities, and seasonal exhibits.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
First and foremost thank you to all our customers! Huge shoutout goes to my co-founder Woody whose creative spark ignited the entire journey. But also this journey would never have started without Camila and Alex who help us in countless ways and who are the mothers of our baby girls, the original inspiration for the baby mittens! So huge thanks also goes to our original mitten testers and models Penny, Alison, Marty, and Samantha. From a business standpoint, there are so many people to thank that have helped us along the way. Hiral and Jim for industry insights, Eli for startup expertise, Kirk, Matt and James for intellectual property guidance, Dan for ecommerce wisdom, Denton on advertising tips, and many others for support! Also we want to thank the original three universities that gave us the licensing approval to get the idea off the ground: University of Texas, Texas Tech University, and Texas A&M. Lastly, a big shoutout to VoyageDallas and others who have given us the opportunity to share our Day1Fans story.

Website: www.day1fans.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/day1fans/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/day1fansco/

Image Credits
credit by image name: day1fans baby collage – Woody Apfel, Alex Bourdeau day1fans first ever mitten prototype – Alex Bourdeau day1fans main street fest booth – Alex Apfel flyer back – Woody Apfel, Alex Bourdeau flyer front – Woody Apfel, Alex Bourdeau smu mustang fanmitts – Woody Apfel texas aggies fanmitts – Woody Apfel texas longhorns fanmitts – Alex Bourdeau texas tech red raider fanmitts – Woody Apfel

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