Fabian Geyrhalter
Welcome to the show, Alex.

Alex Ostroy
Thank you for having me.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Oh it’s so good to have you. I believe this is the first time we have a trained illustrator and graphic designer on the show. Yes. So, as you know, there are plenty of creatives in the audience. So I know I’m not the only one who is excited for this episode. So to kind of put a little bit of a background out there, you. And please correct me if I’m wrong, but you grew up racing bikes and when you failed to make the cut on the Olympic team, you settled for art school instead.

Alex Ostroy
I mean, that that was hyperbolic. I mean, that’s just my way of saying I you know, there was no future career in cycling for me.

Fabian Geyrhalter
So you were far from the Olympic team, but you were, but drawing was a huge passion for you all the time. Right. And you graduated, RISD, I could say late eighties, but that makes it worse. Let’s say in 89. And then you had quite the creative dream career. You were the creative director for NOOK at Barnes Noble’s. You taught at pretty much all New York City design schools from NYU to Pratt. And then in 2013, it seemed like that was the moment where you injected your lifelong passion for cycling into your design career when you became creative director at Lemond Bicycles. Now, Lemond is Greg Lemond’s company, and Greg was ahead of his time in 1986 when he was the first to win the Tour de France on a carbon fiber bicycle. So this is kind of where everything came together. Take it from here, Alex. When was that moment? So you’re working at Lemond. When was that moment where you said, I’m going to start my own brand? Like, how did that. How did that transition work and what happened in your brain?

Alex Ostroy
My these two lifelong passions, in retrospect, perhaps it seems obvious that I would have a company that dealt with design and cycling, But it wasn’t at the time. It wasn’t. It happened. They merged very slowly. Greg Lemond was somebody who’s sort of ever present in my in my life, even my childhood, when there weren’t a lot of American cycling heroes. Even when he was 14 or 15. He was very well known by cyclists, which is saying something because obviously this is before the Internet. And cycling was a tiny niche sport even compared to what it is now. At the time in the eighties. But he was such a prodigy that the news about him got out when he was 14 or 15. A little bit like a LeBron James.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah.

Alex Ostroy
So it was very surreal meeting him and then working for him later.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And he talked highly about you. I just saw a testimonial of his about your work. So you really.

Alex Ostroy
He’s been very supportive of our company and of me. Yeah, he’s a great friend to have.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And then how did it like while you were working for him, at what point did you realize it’s time to start your own your own thing? And then how did you start Ostroy? I mean, was it like an overnight thing or was it super planned or did you get a partner for the business? Tell us a little bit about that journey.

Alex Ostroy
Right. It actually happened very slowly and very unintentionally. But again, in retrospect, maybe it looks more inevitable.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah.

Alex Ostroy
I was an illustrator and a graphic designer for years in New York, but I also was racing bikes and so on bike teams oftentimes people will have different duties to try to run the team. So mine frequently was design the jerseys and then the jerseys that I was doing caught some attention and I put some in a friend’s bike store a couple of blocks from my house and they started getting more attention there and even then I wasn’t convinced that this was that I should quit my job and design bike jerseys, it seemed like. And unlikely way to make a living. So what really happened was somebody who was on my team years ago approached me and he said, let’s make this into a real business. And I said, you’re out of your mind. This is a terrible idea for a real business. And then he called me again the next week and said the same thing. And I said the same thing. And eventually he said, I’m going to do it anyway, so join me or not. And I thought, well, this is going to be, this guy doesn’t even you know, he doesn’t know the first thing about design or sourcing or manufacturing. He’s going to really need, you know, I can’t let him do this alone. Right. But as it turned out, it was quite the opposite, that he was an incredible business person. And now I feel like when I’m walking around New York, there are all kinds of architects and chefs and creative people who could do amazing things that just haven’t found the right business partner.

Fabian Geyrhalter
I love that.

Alex Ostroy
It was very lucky.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah, and so was he because he would have been like, who knows how he would have managed that. But that’s really amazing because, you know, this is this is kind of like going into another question that I wanted to ask a little bit later on but it fits so nicely now because you are an artist, you know, how much do you listen to the market for trends and how much is driven by your impulse ambition? I find this super interesting because you successfully blend art and business and obviously you have you have a partner for the business part, right? But I’m sure at this point everyone’s juggling everything. But not many artists can successfully blend you know, the financial aspect, you know, finding customers and just doing what they love doing. How much do you listen to your audience and how much do you just, you know, doodle and say, this is it, like I want to have a jersey that looks like this?

Alex Ostroy
So I suspect that creating products solely on what you’d like and not worrying about other people is a good strategy, especially if you feel strongly about your ideas. But I also suspect there are people that see a hole in the marketplace or a problem they can identify that they’re able to solve and explain. And that can be very successful too.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Totally and that makes tons of sense. And I mean, especially with I mean, what do you do? It’s there are two things, right? One is the artistic and it’s the expression. And then the other part is the technical, and it’s actually creating functional clothing that has that constantly needs to evolve. Right.

Alex Ostroy
So it’s funny because the word design encompasses both of those things, but they are very different. There’s creativity involved. But for example, to engineer a pair of cycling bibs, there is a lot of design as there is to paint a flower that goes on it. So but these are, these two things are obviously completely different practices that I’ve had to work on.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah, and it’s funny because your entire life you were kind of mixing them a little bit because you and I talked a little bit before before we started taping and you told me this constant kind of like, am I a graphic design, am I an illustrator, right? Because illustration is kind of like where you where you came from and graphic design is how you how you started, you know, like making a living and creating something that is more purposeful in the sense of actually solving an immediate problem versus art, an illustration where it’s a little bit more free form, right? And you did that all your life, though, and just like you, just like you were an illustrator and you were a cyclist, it seemed like with Ostroy, all of that really kind of magically came together.

Alex Ostroy
Well, I’ve always admired graphic designers or artists that straddle the line between the two. So this is, that’s another thing that creating cycling kits has enabled me to, I have to straddle that line.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah.

Alex Ostroy
So anyway, so as I said, I suspect creating good products based on solely what you like is good. The other way is good. I’d say in our case, we definitely come from a place of creating designs that we would like to see, or worse, solely for our own amusement. Sometimes without a customer in mind at all. Sometimes we get customers for those products and sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we’re just scratching our own itch. But I think oftentimes that works better than trying to anticipate what other people are going to think of your idea. If you make it for yourself, sometimes you, other people can relate to that even more than when you try to please them.

Fabian Geyrhalter
I absolutely love that. And I, I so agree. I so agree with that, because if you’re able to, you will never be able to innovate or create something new if you only listen to everyone else. And I think it’s the Henry Ford quote that we talked about the other day. Right. There’s like, you know, faster horses, right? It’s like you can’t, you can’t just keep doing faster horses, right? Like, yes, you will have maybe out of ten SKUs. Maybe maybe one is going to bomb, maybe two are going to bomb. Right. But then there might be one or two in there that are that are going to sell like crazy and no one else has anything like it. And that’s what makes your brand your brand.

Alex Ostroy
The good thing about doing clothing, in our case is unlike, say, the movie business failures are not that expensive. So I actually try to create more failures because obviously instinctively you don’t want a failure. But pushing us towards doing, taking bigger risks is a good thing because all of the products that have been super successful and innovative have been things that we had no idea whether or not people would like them.

Fabian Geyrhalter
So, I mean, do you, look, now that I’m also in the product business I have to dive deeper into that. So do you basically put out some new designs for preorder and then you see how they’re doing before you start manufacturing or how does it work where it’s not that big of a risk, like you’re sitting on like 500 of them?

Alex Ostroy
That’s a good question. This is a process we’ve evolved slowly. Where we’re at now is I will make one sometimes and then I’ll take a picture of it and we’ll put it up on some of our social media channels, and then we’ll just see what the response is. And then if it’s pretty good, then we’ll make 30 and we’ll see how they sell. Just, you know, in a day. And then if that works, then we’ll go and make hundreds.

Fabian Geyrhalter
That’s amazing. And you’re able to do that because you’re working with a small manufacturer in Tuscany, right?

Alex Ostroy
Exactly.

Fabian Geyrhalter
There’s a, you tell a super cool story about the people involved in making each garment in this idyllic spot in Italy. Let me read two lines from the process page on your website to give the audience a little bit of an idea how Italian manufacturing partners sit at the base of the medieval foothills of Tuscany, about halfway between Florence and Pisa, this small factory founded by two friends over 40 years ago, is one of the last that is still family owned and operated with two generations of craftsmen working and riding side by side

Fabian Geyrhalter
every day. It doesn’t get more beautiful than that for a brand story that you’re, that you’re doing that. But the brand romance aside.

Alex Ostroy
Did I write that after reading your book? That does sound really good.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Look at that. That’s what I pay you the big bucks for. Right. Check is in the mail. Well, I guess it’s venmo or zelle or whatever these days, but thank you. I appreciate it. But I mean, that is, you know, it’s a beautiful, you know, brand story. And it seems to allow you to do very small batches because it is literally made by hand. But brand romance aside, it’s so interesting because I had Norwegian Wool on here, I think two shows ago, and they manufacture their coats somewhere close to Florence, too. And I’m just, to me, it is it seems so implausible that you’re able to create product in a beautiful area like, like Tuscany and still be able to somehow manage, you know, like a certain price point. How come that all of these brands that really are high into quality and craftsmanship that they go to Tuscany is it because they can afford it doing D2C is that what it is because there’s no middlemen.

Alex Ostroy
I think it’s that, that’s more about an Italian self-interest. I mean, Italy is having trouble as it is economically. And the one thing it has going for it is its reputation for quality and craftsmanship.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah.

Alex Ostroy
So it knows that. And it goes out of its way to try to be competitive. So it’s surprisingly competitive.

Fabian Geyrhalter
It’s really amazing. And it’s, you know, I’m curious how you were able to find that factory, but in the end, it’s pretty obvious, right? Because that’s where, you know, businesses like yours go and that a factory or manufacturer, factory sounds horrible. That manufacturer is actually they’re all riding themselves and it’s like a shared passion. It must feel extremely rewarding.

Alex Ostroy
It is a very good question. And we really stumbled upon the people at this factory at a cycling event.

Fabian Geyrhalter
No way.

Alex Ostroy
And it was sort of a big piece of luck besides finding my partner. And it really has opened my eyes. I go there every year now, and when I go there it’s, I’m doing business and in an Italian mode, which means I’m folded into their family. I can’t even have breakfast alone. I talk to them all the time. There’s no business outside of a close personal friendship. And for a small factory like that in Italy.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah. That is amazing.

Alex Ostroy
They’ve become very good friends of ours.

Fabian Geyrhalter
That’s amazing. That’s beautiful. Ostroy. Let’s talk about Ostroy as a brand name. I mean, you are literally Mr. Ostroy. What was the process like for you to decide to go with your last name as the company name rather than creating a name out of nothing, which I’m sure you would have been able to do fairly easily?

Alex Ostroy
We tried, actually, so the story is we did try. I didn’t want to name it Ostroy one because I didn’t think it was fair to the other people working there. And my partner, that really was the one that founded it. And two, I wasn’t so sure I wanted to attach my name to it. But what happened was we did think of a lot of names, but it was hard to get a URL and no one could really agree on one. I did have this six letter URL from 1996 that I would use for a design site previously, So at the end of the day, it just it seemed like the most logical thing and I still have mixed feelings about it.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Well, but the amazing thing is, I mean, it sounds like a brand. It doesn’t sound like someone’s last name, which is. Which is amazing, right? I couldn’t I couldn’t try it with Geyrhalter even though I did. I had Geyrhalter Design, you know, a long, long time ago, which was not quite as smooth as Ostroy. Beautiful. Going back to the story so with the name and you know like how you actually created the company, there’s the brand Rapha and we talked a little bit about it yesterday, you and I what was it Rapha that flipped cycling and the associated design of apparel and paraphernalia on its head like from from the typical neon jerseys right that everyone saw everywhere to something actually you know that’s fashionable and expressive like was it companies like Rapha that that kind of provided a platform on which you could carve out your like more eclectic niche or was it not as simple as that?

Alex Ostroy
I think Rapha definitely was a bomb that went off in cycling. Simon Mottram, the guy that created Rapha, came from LVMH, and he was a marketer there and he was a passionate cyclist. I think he looked at the cycling market and he saw no one was really using lifestyle marketing effectively and that, he came in with a plan to use lifestyle marketing. And this is 2004, a very simple, minimalist kind of Apple Martha Stewart graphics. And it worked very well. He sold, he sold cycling. He didn’t try to sell his jerseys. He sold the beauty of cycling and the romance of cycling.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And that really, you know, like, like starting. And we see that in every single sector, right, where people come in and they say, look, we can make this sexy, you know, like this is currently, you know, it’s an enthusiast board, It’s not sexy. We can make that sexy. And with and with Ostroy, I mean, this is really, this is really what you did, where you, you know, let’s talk a little bit about your philosophy behind Ostroy. It is colorful. It is expressive. It is inclusive. Like you, you know. Sure there was the passion for it, for illustration and for and for cycling. But what is kind of like your, you know, fundamental belief behind the company of like why do you feel like when you started it, like what did you want to bring people like how did you want to make people feel?

Alex Ostroy
Well, Rapha, I was designing jerseys before Rapha and I come from a painterly sensibility. I loved the artists in New York in the eighties, the Neo expressionists, Basquiat, Warhol.

Fabian Geyrhalter
You can also see it too. In a lot of the designs.

Alex Ostroy
Abstract expressionism. So it’s actually quite antithetical to Rapha.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Totally.

Alex Ostroy
It’s not a minimalist approach at all. It’s a very eclectic, eccentric approach. It’s like I said, it’s more like eighties New York City painting, punk rock, DIY, kind of esthetic, a hip hop kind of eccentric, eclectic thing going on. And so I wanted to bring that to cycling because I didn’t see it. And when I was riding around in New York with a minimalist jersey in downtown, it just didn’t seem to push back the same energy that the city was pushing to me.

Fabian Geyrhalter
I love that. That’s beautiful. Yeah. No, absolutely. And how involved, how involved are you in the other creative aspects of Ostroy, like outside of illustrations, like do you write social post copy? Like do you, are you fully involved in everything creative.

Alex Ostroy
Yes. I mean it’s a small company. I do have my partner really runs the business, so I’m very fortunate to have that. We have another person that’s a partner that helps us sort of set the dials on the digital marketing, and that’s been huge as well. But I’m responsible for the photography, for the copy, obviously for the design, I do have some help with that.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Amazing, amazing. So literally sorry to interrupt, but it’s you’re the quintessential creative perfectionist, the micromanager that had to build their own company to safely be able to do so. You’re like because.

Alex Ostroy
You know, Jack of all trades, master of none I would say.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Well I wouldn’t say that because you’re definitely master of illustration and everything else, and everything falls nicely into place. And that’s the beauty of running your own brand, right? And having done pieces of that over your entire career, where you constantly have to blend a lot of creative, you know, creative, creative media, creative, you know, pursuits in order to to see your vision come to life. And now, you know, you have to do it day to day. And I say have to, but it must be a dream come true because you literally are in charge of the entire, you know, like design brand voice. It must be really cool and slightly overwhelming at times. I’m sure.

Alex Ostroy
For me, I think it’s something that I really always wanted to do. I love doing all aspects of creative. I’m, I didn’t like sharing some of those jobs when I worked at agencies. You know, there’s a great cost, I think, to be paid for doing it all yourself, of course. But I think for some people it’s the best solution.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah. Yeah, totally. What does this horribly misunderstood word of branding mean to you? Because you’ve literally looked at it from all sides and you created brands, you know, along the way. What is, what does branding mean to you? How would you describe branding to someone?

Alex Ostroy
It’s a quality that’s a space in our collective imagination as consumers. For me, sometimes it’s an interesting exercise to consider what isn’t a brand, to try to figure out what is a brand. So for example, in New York City, we have two big drug stores that are competing, CVS and Duane Reade. I can’t tell you the difference in the branding from one to the other, what they mean to me. In my mind, they’re the same thing. I don’t care if I need to go into a drugstore, I don’t walk an extra block to get to a Duane Reade if a CVS is right in front of me. So in that way they’re both big brands. So there’s some trust there, but they don’t really have, that’s not a strong brand to me. And in cycle clothing, I think as I mentioned before, a lot of them don’t come from design or marketing. They’re just people who love cycling and they might know, they might get a factory and some distribution because of their connection in cycling. So they’re going to follow trends and you can take two of these cycling companies jerseys and switch them overnight and no one would notice the difference.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah.

Alex Ostroy
So that you can be successful that way. But I’m not sure if that’s really a brand. It’s a it’s a company, it’s a business. But I would say that’s not a brand.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Because you don’t have an emotional connection to it. You buy the product for only a utilitarian purpose.

Alex Ostroy
Exactly

Fabian Geyrhalter
Like you buy cotton swabs at a CVS or Walgreens or wherever. Right. And that’s the big difference where and I’ve I’ve noticed this on your Instagram feed, how I mean, you’ve got 80,000 plus followers and it happens to be always the same kind of people that keep, you know, like feeding the machine. But they’re constantly, everything you post they’re right there with you, you know, like where they’re like, excited about it or questioning something or adding something to the conversation. And that to me is when you really realize that, that you built a brand because you’ve got that community of people that are passionate for not only what you do, but what you stand for. And I think that’s really, really powerful.

Alex Ostroy
And let’s face it, it’s also going to be the opposite. If you do something that that it’s a very strong brand, there’s going to be people that really don’t like it.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Hopefully.

Alex Ostroy
Exactly. Which is a good sign. And our stuff definitely isn’t for everybody. We realize that.

Fabian Geyrhalter
And it and it has to be that way. And that’s and you work hard for it, well you don’t work hard for it to be that way, you do it out of gut. Because again, to the beginning of our conversation, you do it because you want you feel like this design deserves a space in the world and you put it out there and you hope for the best that other people you know are feeling the same way. But now that you’ve got you’ve got 100,000 followers overall, most probably plus, you know, with email and all the other social media and everything, these people expect nothing less from you right. So at this point they want that. They’re there for that particular reason, which is a great is a great achievement in itself.

Alex Ostroy
And ultimately they’re the arbiters which I love about doing this as compared to working in an agency or when I was working with art directors for other agencies. And there’s a lot of internal politics and there are people that have their own agendas for their own careers. So sometimes I felt like the best, my best effort never really got to get made. Yeah, I think these are the kinds of if you’re a person that feels very passionately about things like that and doesn’t care that much about making a lot of money, you’re a good candidate for starting your own design business.

Fabian Geyrhalter
That is true, and I’m sure a lot of people can relate to it. Given you’re given your background, do you have any brand advice for founders or for designers, as you know, as a takeaway, as we’re slowly coming to the end of a show.

Alex Ostroy
One important thing is how to consider advice, criticism and feedback from friends and family. I think the issue for me is I often will show my work at a point where I feel like I need to see some feedback. But you also have to get very good at criticizing the criticism. If you’re a designer. And oftentimes when you show people your stuff, they’re not going to tell you what they think. They’re going to tell you what they think other people will think. And that’s not very useful feedback, I find. I’ll give you an example of super positive feedback. If I show somebody that I’m working with, say, an influencer, a model, a new jersey, and they respond by saying, can I just buy that now? That’s great feedback. That’s better than saying, I really like I think people will really love that new color. When they get that visceral reaction and they want it, that’s much more powerful to me.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah.

Alex Ostroy
You know what people say and what they actually do with their money are two entirely different things. And that’s a great thing about marketing something, marketing your designs and not working with the filter of corporations and art directors. You get to see what the marketplace says.

Fabian Geyrhalter
I love that. And you’re, and you’re extremely fortunate to be in a situation like that, but that’s a situation that one can build around themselves too.

Alex Ostroy
Yeah that’s a great thing about the Internet, marketing on the Internet, it’s not that hard to do.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Yeah, yeah. You’ve got a focus group of tens of thousands of people right there, and they’re actually a useful focus group rather than someone who gets paid for it, for their opinion.

Alex Ostroy
It’s true, but that would be further along in the design process. I have friends that I trust, other designers, and we we can share designs and we listen, you know, listen to their feedback before I show it to thousands of people. Sometimes I’ll have, I’ll send something to the factory and have them just print something on fabric like a canvas and send it back to me.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Just to see how it feels.

Alex Ostroy
Yeah, just to look at it like that. And I’ll cut it out with a pair of scissors and look at it.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Very cool. Last but not least, as we’re slowly, slowly coming towards the end here, I always ask this question. Everyone knows I will. I hope you’re prepared and know that I’m going to ask this question, but every brand has kind of like this thread that goes through the brand that I, I call it the brand’s DNA. So if you think about Liquid Death, you think about mischief, Right? And if you think about Everlane you think about transparency. And so when you think about Ostroy, what is kind of like that one word or the two words that you feel really encapsulate the brand.

Alex Ostroy
I’m going to go with a hyphenated two words.

Fabian Geyrhalter
Okay, Let’s make sure, let’s all envision the hyphen as we go through this.

Alex Ostroy
Self Expression I think would be our word.

Fabian Geyrhalter
I love that. I love that. Yeah.

Alex Ostroy
So self-expression would be my word. But I do have a story that if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to read you that maybe it encompasses the spirit a little bit better.

Fabian Geyrhalter
That would be amazing. Go for it.

Alex Ostroy
This is my effort to try to tell a story about what’s different about our brand than a lot of the other brands. When most people imagine the perfect bike ride, they think of smooth car free manicured roads, rolling lavender hills, the sun streaming through majestic leafy trees, snowcapped Alps, deep blue, cloudless skies. At least that’s where all the bike companies seem to put their products. You could be in Napa, Malibu, the Alps, the Iberian Peninsula. It’s all the same. It’s a perfect place where every ride is epic and the cyclists they picture are interchangeable, retouched to anodyne perfection. New York City seems about as far away from that place as you can get. It’s a pothole ridden, overpopulated mess. It’s noisy, smelly, shadowy, foul weather and often soul crushing. It almost seems to be built intentionally inhospitable to riding bikes. You’ll find yourself carrying your bike up hundreds of rusty stairs because bike lanes on bridges are locked or pushing on to crowded subway cars against thousands of shoving commuters because feels like 20 degrees really feels like minus 4 after your feet get wet and your socks turn into icicles.

You’ll get yelled at a lot. You’ll dodge police cars parked in bike lanes and you’ll get ticketed for not riding in the bike lane. Drivers will even yell at you after near-misses when they’re clearly at fault. It’s always your fault. But cycling thrives in New York. It always has. The Madison race was invented in Madison Square Garden, where cycling was more popular than baseball 100 years ago. A bicycle replaces cars in New York much more easily than in most American cities. And at the same time, it gives the cyclists an endlessly fascinating view that makes walking New York City such a great way to explore the city. The landscape itself changes dramatically every few blocks. Chinatown to Little Italy to Soho, to the East Village in about 5 minutes on my bike. In five more minutes, I’m at the Empire State Building or the Chrysler Building. It’s like time traveling, like touring a museum of history and culture where eons of time and light years of space are compressed and colliding into a few tiny city blocks. It’s not an accident so much great art and culture are born in this city. I leave my studio and I work out designs in my head as I ride. I pass new throw up tags on the Bowery. I’ll see a Dagro painting through window of a tiny Lower East Side gallery. A woman’s leggings have razor blades embroidered on the knees. So much to see. Something’s got to jar an idea loose. A cab almost runs me off the road picking up a fair. You can keep the Alps.

Fabian Geyrhalter
This is amazing. This is, this is brand poetry, my friend. And I don’t, I don’t even want to ask any more questions. I want to leave it right there because I felt that this is such a perfect way to exit the show. Tell us where can people find Ostroy like, you know, like on social, website, etc. How can people get into that spirit?

Alex Ostroy
Ostroy.com and we have OstroyNYC on Instagram. Those are probably the two best ways.

Fabian Geyrhalter
That’s awesome. Alex, It was so fantastic having you on. Thank you so much for spending, for spending your time with us and sharing, sharing the journey.

Alex Ostroy
Thanks so much for having me Fabian. It was really fun.