Today REBEL8 turns twenty years old. Honestly, I'm not shocked we made it this far. My intention out the gate was to create a heritage brand. However, I had no idea how different the journey would actually be compared to the original construct I had in my mind.
As a child I used to loving playing this game in school called Oregon Trail. For those of you who are familiar, bare with me on a few explanatory sentences. The game was designed to teach kids about the harsh realities of 19th-century pioneer life on the Oregon Trail. The player is the wagon leader and would guide a group of settlers in a covered wagon. It was your job to safely cross rivers, hunt for food, navigate deadly diseases, make trades, and so on. In retrospect the game was more about building a strong team and leading them, versus a history lesson on pioneering a trail. I always set the game pace to grueling and inevitably I'd always lose a few folks along the way.
I've seen quite a few people work at REBEL8 over two decades. Whether it was ten days or ten years, I can say in confidence that I'm appreciative and thankful for all that have decided to work with me. I could have never done it alone.
You know what's hella crazy? As I write these words I think this is the first time I'm attempting to embrace and be accepting of the past. I have wished upon many stars to have a time machine and do this or that differently. But on some stoner shit, if I really had a time machine would I just change that one thing? Probably not.
The koolest thing about staying in the game for so long is using your past mistakes to effect your future advantages. Your ability to take tough lessons learned and apply them moving forward. I started as a complete fucking amateur, and while I still learn new shit everyday, I have enough history to see some bullshit from a mile away and have the discipline to say no, when everyone else is nodding yes.
So let's pivot and talk about you, the customer.
I have always run this brand from the perspective that treating your customers the way you'd want to be treated yourself is crucial. To this day, all our policies are aligned to that golden rule. And that doesn't mean the customer is always right. I don't subscribe to that shit. It means that the customer is always treated fairly and with respect - fair to them and fair to REBEL8. My radical transparency has allowed you to truly see me and believe in the brand as a whole. I talk to you as family and as friend. Straight up. And to be perfectly clear, without you there is no REBEL8. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for everything. Thank you for supporting my dream.
So a few more things before you carry on.
We dropped a new collection that's available right now. I went down memory lane and selected a graphic or two that best represented the year it was first released, including the original REBEL8 t-shirt from 2003. While some tees are exact copies of the past, most have been slightly updated for relevancy. All tees come with a 20th Anniversary exterior label. We have never re-released any of these graphics until today. We also just re-released the Burn Bridges and Logo Script Snapbacks. Both snapbacks include the 20th Anniversary label on the interior.
I have a lot to tell you about how I plan on moving forward with the brand, but let's end this newsletter here and save that for another day.
Thanks for two decades of REBEL8!
<3 Josh
