By this point, we were up to maybe 30-40 employees. This year, one of my most significant hires was Austin, or as you all know him, Ragz. Austin came in as a junior designer under me, and I was ruthless. I worked him to the bone. I treated him as a son and I was relentless with him.
I taught him everything I knew, and shared everythign with him. He would sleep in the warehouse, hell we would both sleep in the warehouse. I can't tell you how many times both of us would be on mattresses next to each other passed out in the creative area. He would film everything — this is when we started documenting and recording everything. Thanks to him, I was able to double my creative power. It was amazing.
This was also the year Dana returned to Olympia. We had a slight feeling that it might not work out this year. So we decided to go on another tour, which was the Porcshe tour, where we shipped our Cayman and our 911 Turbo to Vegas, and after Olympia, we road tripped to my brother's wedding in North Carolina. So we stopped at gyms every five hours to see Dana's fans. And it was amazing to see all the crowds that would come out, I'm talking a couple thousand people at every gym all cheering Dana's name all offering all the support in the world.
The brand was stepping more into cut and sew at this time, and we were getting better at it. 2014 was when we really started assembling a team.
