Meet Our Stockist: REVOLVR Menswear

Often, at Fulton & Roark we will get texts and pictures from some of our friends or colleagues when they see our products in stores.  While we get these from all over the country, we hear the most about our products being in REVOLVR Menswear and how proud we should be to have our product in their store.  REVOLVR Menswear was founded by Jon and Christine Davis who wanted to provide quality clothing for guys at an affordable price and with that a great atmosphere and has locations in both Bend, Oregon, and Bozeman Montana.  Their stores provide a cozy yet chic atmosphere with rustic brick walls and wood accents. When visiting the store you will see that the focus is on the experience. While service is exceptional, there is a no pressure atmosphere which allows people to really explore the store while enjoying local artwork and beer.  Jon and Christine have created a fantastic experience which we are proud to be a part of.

What made you decide that you wanted to open a menswear store?

Jon: We just saw a need for it in Bozeman.  I had lived there for 15 years and there had never really been a good option.  There had been a couple of more traditional menswear stores suiting and that kind of thing that would pop up and open and close relatively soon.  Some of the women’s stores would put up a little section taking up 10% of their sales floor and offer some decent clothing but no selection really.  So my wife and I just saw a need or at least what we saw as a hole or need for that. So at the time, we were closing down our ski apparel shop and just kind of flipped over in about two months over to what it is now.

When coming up with the concept of REVOLVR, what did you imagine and who did you envision shopping at your stores?

Jon: Definitely at the beginning, we were very sensitive to price and we wanted to be very accessible to college kids being Bozeman is a college town.  I think a lot of times a lot of boutiques that open in downtown areas tend to be pretty high-end and we knew that we didn’t want to do that. We knew we wanted to be like good brands that are well known but not at this kind of unattainable price point.  So, at the time when we initially opened switched it kind of more into like action sports brands but kind of cherry-picked their lines for their more lifestyles part of their line and then obviously mixed in with some Levi’s and Naked and Famous. Those were kind of our high end- like $130 for a pair of jeans.  The vision, in the beginning, was definitely was kind of like not overly done clothing in general- like no embroidery, no extra crazy graphics or anything like that. We wanted it to be everyday kind of guy and its evolved over the years but that’s still the core of what we do and the customer that we envisioned in the beginning probably would have been like a mid 20’s to mid 30’s guy that’s like out of college, starting a career, wants to look nice but doesn’t want to spend $1000 on one outfit.  

Christine: I think the ideal person we were shopping for when creating REVOLVR was Jon because he was in his early 30’s and there was really nowhere for him to shop so we felt like there’s got to be someone else that has this same issue, all guys wear clothing and apparently they have   to buy it locally besides a Farm and Ranch store or The Buckle so we really kind of thought “What would we buy as consumers?” and we tried to tailor it to that because again we loved all the stores we saw in major cities that were high-end, heritage, super-cool, but they weren’t realistic for our budget so that’s who we were shopping for.    

Having stores in Oregon and Montana, are there ways in which you incorporate some local or regional style into your stores?

Jon: In the decor, we’ve gone to local antique shops and finding things that represent the area.  As far as the product mix, it is mostly the same but we do try to team up with any local vendors that do any leather goods or any other kind of thing that makes sense for us to stock.  It is kind of fun to have a local mix if it makes sense

Christine: We also feature local beer, so the beer, the artwork, and the events are where we tap into the community element for each town and I think that’s been a huge part of our success is just that feeling that you get when you come in.

If you have, in what ways have you worked with locals in Bend and Bozeman?

Christi: It is an everyday thing.  It’s just being present in the store.  It’s going and supporting other businesses.  It’s being a part of downtown associations, events, or meetings, sponsoring local nonprofits.  It’s not like a piece of our agenda every day, it’s just the way we do business.

What made you decide that you wanted to carry Fulton & Roark solid colognes?

Jon: I think initially it was a unique product that we hadn’t seen around, again I think when you think about if you were to ask a guy what it is like to shop for cologne, it’s like, you think about a Macy’s environment where there are these cases of hundreds of colognes and all of them smell pretty much the same and everyone can smell you 50 feet away and Fulton & Roark just seemed to kind of align with our goals of how we like to style and how we like to buy our product too.  It is kind of understated where you do smell good but everyone around you doesn’t smell you as well. The packaging obviously was something cool and different, and something that we hadn’t seen. Then the price point was right too so it seemed so it was kind of just an easy decision for us 

Christine: I think the functionality also spoke to us because we don’t sell things that aren’t really practical usually and lots of guys when they’re traveling, don’t want to carry around a glass bottle that can break.  The solid cologne element and how easy it is to use, and pack, and how small it is, is perfect for a guy. The more simple the better. 

I have read a lot of reviews that talk about the knowledgeable staff and people being able to have a beer when they shop.  With this, what is the kind of experience you want shoppers to have while at REVOLVR?

Jon: It is definitely like a comfortable setting.  We kind of want people to just come in and hang out.  We don’t work on a sales structure or a customer service structure where it is pressuring customers to buy because they’re in.  It is just come in, have a beer, look around, chat with the team, look at some local art and if you see something that you like and you want to purchase, that’s awesome but the experience that we want people to have is that they just enjoy coming in, whether they are purchasing or not.  We just feel like they’ll come back if they have a good experience there. So very low-key as far as maybe what the stigma is about shopping for clothing, especially for guests where it can be intimidating sometimes so we definitely don’t want that so we kind of just have a big focus on chatting it up with the customers and just making them feel comfortable and wanting to come back again