About

My name is Brian, and I am the founder of United By Blue, a sustainable brand of apparel that, for every product sold, removes 1 pound of trash from our world’s oceans and waterways through company organized cleanups.

I started on my entrepreneurial journey while in college in 2006.  After attending 3 different universities, for one year each, I graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia with a degree in Asian Studies.

Early Years
I was born in the green mountains of Vermont on December 20, 1986.  Upon turning 1, my mother and father braved the unknown and moved our family to Tokyo, Japan.  Moving to Japan in the 80s is by no means the same as moving to Japan now. The language barrier was extreme and my brothers and I were the rare, cute and somewhat spooky white children whenever we went out.  We stayed in Japan for 7 years.

After our 7 years in Japan we headed south to the tiny island nation of Singapore, where I would spend the remainder of my childhood.  Singapore is in many ways a utopia.  It is a clean, safe, modern, and fun city to live in.  And although it is very small (the entire country is 275 sq miles), it is in a central location of South East Asia, which makes travel to surrounding countries such as Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, very easy.  I love Singapore and have fond memories of my 12 years there.  It was also in Singapore where my entrepreneurial roots were developed and nurtured.

They say some people are born entrepreneurs, and this may be the case for me. Looking back on my childhood I can point to at least a dozen ventures I undertook with profits in mind.  Some of the more extreme attempts at business were hilarious.  Inspired by an insect repellant bracelet called BugBand, I decided I could make a deodorant bracelet that could be worn on your wrist in lieu of deodorant under your armpits.  As a young adolescent I took this idea seriously and cut strips of felt and repeatedly ran my deodorant strip on them to saturate them with a classic Old Spice aroma.  Test marketing the products with my neighbors showed the obvious faults in such a concept, and the product never made it out of my bathroom.  But not all my early ventures were complete failures.  I capitalized on the beanie baby craze (yes it hit Singapore too), and bought scores of the plush toys on a family trip to Beijing for less than a dollar each (now I realize they were fakes), and sold them on my school bus for $20 a piece.  And during a YoYo craze that swept our school during my 5th grade, I was crowned the official YoYo champion for our grade during a school-wide competition.  Leveraging my 15 minutes of fame I was able to sell numerous YoYos I imported from Japan to my classmates for upwards of $60 a piece.  I could go on and on about the various entrepreneurial endeavors I undertook during my childhood, such as selling a live fish for $1000, or the hundreds of CDs I sold of my older brother’s band, making more money than the band members did themselves, but it will suffice to say non of these ventures turned into a business.

Past
Leaving Singapore, I headed to the United States for college.  I attended my freshman year at Calvin College in Michigan. Although I don’t have anything against the school, I was out of place and did not enjoy my freshman year. Growing up in two large, international cities, Grand Rapids MI just wouldn’t cut it. But my year in Michigan was not a total waste; it was in my boredom that I began to think seriously about starting a company, and before school let out for the year I had a rough business plan and a product line for Sand Shack.  That first summer in the United States I headed to Cape Cod, MA where my extended family is from and began peddling Sand Shack brand jewelry to stores.  That first summer I grossed $10,000 in sales and learned invaluable lessons about business. But I still had to finish college, and I did not want to go back to Michigan.  So, I packed my bags and headed to China for a year of intense Mandarin language studies.

While in China I not only gained fluency in Mandarin, but I met and built relationships with future manufacturers and suppliers of Sand Shack products.  Although it is not necessary to meet overseas suppliers in person, as technology makes it easy to do business without a second language or travel to the other side of the world, it has helped me tremendously, as I have a degree of trust with my manufacturers that I wouldn’t have without my year in China.

After China I knew I had to go back to the United States to give my business a real chance.  Looking at a map of the United States, I decided to apply to multiple schools across the country (Washington, Florida, and Philadelphia) .  I ended up coming to Philadelphia for its central location on the east coast, its urban environment, and reasonable cost of living.  In Philadelphia, I attended Temple University and was able to use my sales techniques to negotiate enough transfer credits from my two years in Michigan and China to graduate within one year (3 different schools and 3 years total for my BA).  Although I was not a business student (Liberal Arts), during that year I established invaluable ties with the Entrepreneurship School, and ended up winning the grand prize in their annual business plan competition.

Throughout my college carrier I continued to build Sand Shack, slowly but surely, so that by graduation I was able to become a full time entrepreneur running Sand Shack.

In May 2010, we launched United By Blue, and since then, United By Blue has become one of the most high-profile sustainable apparel brands on the market, with distribution across the United States and Japan.  The brand has been on the cover of the Wall Street Journal, and featured by hundreds of other publications such as GQ, BusinessWeek, and Oprah.

Present
I reside in Philadelphia. I travel the country meeting with customers and building awareness for ocean conservation through our company’s mission.

My work-time is devoted to building and growing United By Blue.  My free-time is devoted to spending time with my wife, Joanna, and my dog, Zoey.

Contact me
I am more than happy to take your questions or hear your ideas.  If you read something on a post here and have question about it, I would prefer it if you left your question in the comment section of the post so other readers can see it too rather than emailing me.

For all other contact needs, including press, you can reach me directly at brian[at]unitedbyblue.com

Have me speak
I may be available to speak at your school, conference, or any other venue. I particularly like to speak about sustainable business practices.  If interested, send me an email to explore this further.