Meet Brian Weaver | Owner

We had the good fortune of connecting with Brian Weaver and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Brian, every day, we talk about how much execution matters, but we think ideas matter as well. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
Back in 2018, our oldest son was shooting a film and had sourced some military uniforms for his actors. We had custom hook & loop (like velcro) patches made for the uniforms in the military “scorpion” colors of bagby green, od green, and black. I asked the vendor if they could do full color patches and they said they could do any patch in thousands of available colors. I had been toying with the idea of doing a custom patch for our three local schools because our children were evenly spread out that we would have one in elementary, one in middle and one about to be in high school. I liked one particular hat and wanted to be able to remove a patch from the hat and replace it with another with the idea of wearing the elementary school patch on a Wednesday night, the Middle School patch on a Thursday night, and the High School patch on a Friday night. The dreamer in me also wanted to get collegiate licensing and wear the college patch on Saturdays, and maybe even one day, get professional licensing and wear the pro logos on Sunday…all without changing my hat – just by changing out the patch. My wife, and business partner liked my idea of the custom patches but she said we would have to come up with a private label line of our own hats so our customers would have something to put the patches on. We also produced luggage tags, wallets, and collector display panels for people to display their patch collections on. She also came up with our tag line, “Where is your Loyalty?” which is a play on words asking what school, organization, destination, or team do you show your loyalty to? and also where do you actually put your Loyalty Patch? Now we also have backpacks, garage shirts, and hoodies in our line of accessories that work with the hook & loop patches.

What should our readers know about your business?
Many people see our removable patch hats out around town in some of our partner stores or restaurants and do not know Loyalty Patch is a local business started right here in Newnan, Georgia. The biggest complements we get are when people ask if we are a chain or a franchise to which we answer, we are the one and only original Loyalty Patch and that my wife and I started the company and the Loyalty Patch brand on our own. People always tell us we need to be on Shark Tank! When we started the company, we had intentions of selling our products online only and through direct sales to different stores, schools, restaurants, and destinations. We kept inventory in our basement and fulfilled orders in a small room on a daily basis. We would hand-deliver orders to local businesses and neighbors who would order from us. In early 2021, we moved near the downtown Newnan area and set up our inventory and online business in our detached garage. On March 26th, 2021, an EF4 tornado struck our town and our house was in the direct path of the tornado. We were home at the time and fortunately our house only suffered roof damage, but our garage was partially destroyed when a large tree landed on it. The tree struck the corner of the garage where we kept our Loyalty Patch inventory. We had homeowner’s insurance and a separate business policy to cover our inventory. We had to find a new place to set up our online business that was still convenient to our home so we could continue to work our normal jobs and fulfill Loyalty Patch orders conveniently and close by. The closest space we could find was a retail storefront in historic downtown Newnan. The landlord was gracious enough to offer us a one-year lease on the space until our garage was rebuilt and we would be able to move back in. That is how we got into the retail business. Now that it has been a year since the tornado hit, and we just finished our garage almost a year to the day the tornado struck, we realized we could not move our “small” business back to our garage. We had grown significantly and our customers had become reliant on visiting our store and being able to touch and feel and stick and switch patches out on their hats. So, we signed another single year lease on our retail location and Loyalty Patch will continue to operate as one of Newnan’s downtown merchants. We have had to maintain irregular business hours because we have other jobs and fortunately for us our customers have been so understanding of our crazy schedules. We live close by so we have been able to meet some of our regular customers at the store beyond normal business hours when it’s convenient for them and for us.

When people see our patch hats out and about, most do not realize our patches are removable and interchangeable. Getting the idea of “Stick. Switch. Collect” over to our customers has been a challenge so people don’t just think we are another hat company. What we offer is very unique and there are very few other companies doing what we are doing in this space. We continue to get the word out and continue to grow our brand.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
We love being convenient to downtown Newnan. When we have friends visit, we love meeting here at our house and walking downtown for drinks and a meal. If we were going to have friends here for a week, we would put them up in our newly constructed garage apartment and would plan meals at many of our favorite restaurants in the downtown area like The Mad Mexican, Redneck Gourmet, Sprayberry’s Barbeque, 714 Bistro, Dunc’s BBQ Kitchen, and Meat and Greet. We love taking in live local music at Abide Brewery, The Mad Mexican, or The Cellar.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
My wife and I have other full time jobs and Loyalty Patch was started as a passion project that quickly turned into more that just a side hustle. I work full time for my brother, Scott Weaver, at an order management, eCommerce software company in Alpharetta. He is very understanding and supportive of our endeavors and we could not have gotten where we are without his support.

Website: www.loyaltypatch.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/loyaltypatch/

Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/loyalty-patch-llc/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/loyaltypatch

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/loyaltypatch