San Antonio Express-News (Sunday)
GRUNT STYLE
infantry unit. He was the commanding officer, and he organized his employees into teams, squads, platoons, companies and eventually battalions. He even wrote military-style OPORDs, or operational orders, to provide guidance.
The culture was “oozing with passion,” which was a benefit, he said. “It caused a lot of problems as well.”
From 18-hour days to all hands pitching in to process orders, people did whatever it took to succeed.
Maybe that’s where some of the trouble crept in.
Alarik said the company early on promoted people too quickly. With scant experience in the apparel industry, some rocketed from team member to director or vice president in charge of millions in revenue or equipment.
“But, it’s like, whatever — let’s just get the job done,” he said.
“It caused a lot of frictions and problems.”
Alcohol was also a workplace problem.
“I remember reading a book that said celebrate your wins, and we had wins all the time, and we would celebrate,” he said. “There was a lot of drinking involved, which was probably too much.”
“Beer:30” Fridays — where work stopped and everyone got together for beers — was an important part of the work culture.
Jeff Summer, a Navy veteran and former Grunt Style shipping worker, interviewed for his position at a bar in 2012. He remembers working late nights and seeing Alarik showing up drunk from time to time.
Metzger said Alarik frequently had the smell of alcohol on his breath during the workday.
Alarik acknowledged drinking at work sometimes, saying, “I can guarantee you late at night I’ve been drunk at the warehouse or the shop.” And at the
office, too.
“I can explain some of those away … but there was times where I was drinking,” he said. “It wasn’t every day. There’ve definitely been a few occasions where I was day drinking.”
Alarik said he’s an introvert who used “alcohol as a coping mechanism” when his wife was diagnosed with cancer in 2014. He also traveled often, and important business engagements typically involved drinking.
“Everyone wants to make it the most epic night ever,” he said. “It’s exhausting.”
“There was a period of about two or three years that was the darkest depression that I’ve ever been in,” he added. “I mean, it was just utter despair, and I used alcohol to cope.”
Alarik said he began trying to quit drinking 2 ½ years ago.
After relapses and outpatient treatment, he said, he’s been sober since February, adding: “I had to make changes in my life.”
‘Whip-snapping’
By several accounts, Grunt Style’s production and shipping department in Illinois was a hard place to work. Metzger said managers ran the place like “a militaristic sweat shop,” ruling by fear.
It wasn’t uncommon for new employees to quit on their first day.
“People would go to the bathroom and not come back,” Metzger said.
Yet for many of the veterans on Grunt Style’s payroll, the work gave them a sense of mission and purpose.
“When it first started, it felt like a band of brothers,” Summer said. “Everybody was fresh out of the military for the most part.”
Sometimes he’d work 20- or 22-hour days and end up sleeping on the warehouse floor.
“They’d give a guy a credit card and say, ‘Go get energy drinks for the guys,’ ” he said. “They’d get everybody all
hopped up on Rip Its, then have us running around a (hot) warehouse all day.”
Another former employee said Alarik sometimes set aside his CEO duties and helped print T-shirts or fill orders.
Production struggled to keep up with sales, intensifying pressure on employees. During holidays and other periods of high demand, everyone pitched in to grind it out in production and shipping, the former employee said.
The day before Christmas Eve one year, “the whole front of the house was in the back taking orders and wrapping up hoodies and getting them out the door,” the former employee said. “We were all-in.”
Company leaders were humble in Grunt Style’s early years, but as business boomed, the “humbleness went away, and then it just became whip snapping,” Summer said. “They took advantage of everybody’s kindness to help them build up to what they’ve become.”
Summer said his bosses asked him to quit college to put in more hours at Grunt Style.
“I was promised a promotion and didn’t get it,” he said. “I had to leave my apartment because I couldn’t afford my rent anymore because I lost the GI Bill.”
He said he was fired in 2015 after taking time off to help his family in Memphis, Tenn.
Looking back, he said, “It was pretty much like working in a college frat house.”
In 2018, the company paid $15,000 to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for three “serious” safety violations in the Carol Stream facility, including inadequate machinery safeguards. It also recently settled a 2019 lawsuit by employees for improperly storing their biometric information on timekeeping devices.
Silbert said growing companies make mistakes, but they don’t define the brand.
“Are there times in a company’s history when you have young, passionate leadership that hasn’t had experience in certain aspects of human resources? Yeah, sure,” he said. “But I don’t think it paints a picture of who the company is and the soul of the company — the people — and more importantly, it doesn’t take away from what we’re trying to accomplish.”
‘Winning every day’
Metzger served in the Marines for six years. Afterward, he went to college and bounced around several jobs before he saw a YouTube ad for Grunt Style in 2014. In four years, he rose from team leader to upper-level management positions — outdoor brand director and then director of corporate accounts.
“The culture was amazing,” he said. “We had a fantastic culture in the front of the house at Grunt Style during the good years.”
Another former employee called that period “magical.”
Through 2017, employees thought Grunt Style was debt
free and performing well. The company was experiencing exponential growth and acquiring new buildings and production lines. The company was forging marketing partnerships and breaking into new markets.
“We thought everything was hunky-dory,” Metzger said. “We were hitting on all cylinders.”
“We were winning every day,” another ex-employee said. “Breaking sales records daily.”
But company spending also spiraled.
Grunt Style spent heavily on
sports sponsorships, including a $200,000-a-year deal with NASCAR in 2017 and 2018, according to a person familiar with the agreements.
Grunt Style entered its most extravagant sports marketing agreement — a $6 million, threeyear sponsorship of the NFL’s Jacksonville Jaguars — after Alarik visited the team’s owner, Shahid Khan, on the billionaire’s yacht.
“When you have people throwing all these opportunities at you, it’s easy to try to say,
‘Yeah, let’s do it,’ ” Alarik said. “Things are going to go up forever — you know, keep chasing it.”
Some on Alarik’s staff thought the Jaguars deal was a bad idea. For his part, Alarik said he didn’t fully understand some of the marketing investments the company was making at the time.
“I think we had some pretty grandiose plans,” he said. “It was just we lost focus and discipline.”
In 2017, Grunt Style commissioned an ad for the 2018 Super Bowl at a cost of $500,000. The
company would have to pay $10 million to air it during the game.
“That’s when I had my ‘Oh, (expletive)’ moment with our finances,” he said. “I didn’t understand the problem yet. I just knew there was a huge problem.”
He said the company had the money for the commercial, but there were too many risks, so he spiked his Super Bowl plan. The video ended up going viral online.
Around that time, in fall 2017, Alarik agreed to a $10 million
loan from C3 Capital. The cash was to come in two tranches: $6 million and then $4 million.
Alarik, however, didn’t describe the loan as an emergency infusion.
“The reason why we took it is because we didn’t need it. We had plenty of cash in the bank,” he said. “I remember reading in a book that the best time borrow money is when you don’t need it.”
Going to Texas
Grunt Style continues on C18