Adam Torres and Chris Cronin discuss tactical clothing.
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Show Notes:
Kitanica designs and manufactures overbuilt tactical and adventure apparel and accessories both in the U.S.A. as well as globally. In this episode, Adam Torres and Chris Cronin, Founder and CMO of Kitanica, explore the Kitanica story and how it’s become a go-to clothing brand for Hollywood movies.
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About Kitanica
Kitanica is a family owned and operated business that designs and manufactures the most functional and durable outdoor gear possible using U.S. made materials and production. Much of Kitanica’s production is done in-house at our Northern California headquarters in Oakland, CA.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on BR Guest to apply. All right, did I have Chris Cronan on the line and he is co-founder and CMO over at Titana?
Chris, welcome to the show. Thanks, Adam. Great to be here. Thanks for having. All right, Chris. So excited to, excited to learn more about Titana today. And also I hear that you have some Hollywood ties, so we’ll, we’ll be getting into that as well. But before we do that, we will get this interview started the way that we start them all with our mission matters minute.
So, Chris, we at Mission Matters. We amplify stories for entrepreneurs, executives, and experts. That’s our mission. Chris, what mission matters to. . Well, we’re on a mission to make the most durable, well-built and engineered outdoor gear available to Mankin. It’s great simple pursuit. , I, I love, no, I, I’m in. And I love bringing mission-based entrepreneurs on the line to share, you know, their mission, why they’re doing what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and really what we can all learn from that so that we all grow together as well.
So, great to have you on. And I guess, I mean, just to get us kicked off here I understand there’s a, there’s a story in the How Titana got started. Tell me that story. So it is a family business. Mm-hmm. , my brother, my brother B or William Cronan is a designer and has been designing clothes since he was about 11.
And my mom sew a machine. Our mom sew a machine, and he basically just started making clothes for himself. And he made some weird cheesemaker’s shirt from some pattern from some crafty store in Connecticut. And hated. It just looks so Three Musketeers. He just started to change it immediately.
He’s like, this isn’t cool. He is like, you need to get rid of this, strip this down, put a pocket over here, and . And he was like, just immediately had this knack for customizing and just, he just kind of could think in pattern pieces, which was, you know, it, it closer, complicated. Anyway, so he, he started doing that and he just went from there and started making.
His own clothes for different things. And he went into farming. He has a degree in soil science and was working on a an orchard and, and was going through clothes. Like crazy you know, the cotton carhartts and mm-hmm. , the things that just wear out when they get wet, washed and dirty and beat up.
I mean, farmers are hard on clothes, as you might imagine. Mm-hmm. and he just started to make stuff out of like ballistic nylon and different cords and just really heavy nylons so that it would last forever and that, and so he started making these like really insane jackets. , you know, took, I don’t know, a hundred hours to make, maybe for the first one when he was learning how to do it and honing in on it.
And , he’s still making those kind of jackets, but, so that was kind of the impetus for. , like, oh, we can make clothes that nobody else makes, like clothes that are so durable that you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t imagine that somebody would make it or need something that durable. Mm-hmm. . But turns out people, people do want that.
And so we’ve been making clothes like that. We’ve got pants, shorts, shirts, sleeves, jackets, and all different levels. Of durability of course, cuz we’re using all sorts of different types of fabrics, but it’s all about quality, build quality materials. We sew everything with boot threads, so it just holds together and it’s just built right and has functionality.
That is something that we also focus on. But that’s where it started was was him making these, these clothes and so, . Yeah. That, that launched the business. So what, what has been, I mean, who are some of the first off when I was kind of reading and looking at everything, so the idea of overbuilt tactical and adventure apparel.
So when you think about that, like is this a , is this a segment in the marketplace? Are you really kind of inventing something new? Because I always thought when, as we were having this conversa, I thought, Carhartt, like those jackets. Like, okay, that’s rugged. That’s, but no, you’re a step above that. I just in terms of durability, in terms of what you’re doing.
Like, like who, who wears this? I’m so curious. Yeah. So it’s a little bit it’s, it’s, it’s a definitely a niche in a way where, but it’s a lot of veteran. Or a kind of key, because those guys are off, you know, they’re, they’re about adventure. They’re advi about, mm-hmm. , you know, they’re, they’re overlanding, they’re, they’re, they’re motorcycling.
They’re at, they have ATVs side-by-sides. They’re out fishing. They just enjoy the outdoors. They’re just kind of that, you know, personality and, and lifestyle. Yeah. And it kind of lends itself and also, you know, , we do sell a lot into Special forces people. Mm-hmm. and Teams and Seal Team Six and those kind of customers that have the you know, the permission or the ability to buy whatever they want.
Mm-hmm. For their teams versus like a uniform, cuz it’s, our stuff is, you know, mostly about 90% made in the US and we have our own soap facility and stuff. And we’re in California, so the minimum wage is very high. And so it it does, it does cost, yeah. Real money to, to do it. But you only have to buy one cause it’s gonna last you forever.
So that’s kind of our, our miss part of our mission is, and, and, you know , anyone who it’s, and it’s really evolved where our line is huge now. We have a ton of different products that we make, we sell, and it looks great, by the way, for everybody. Thank you for everybody that, everybody that’s listening, I mean, I’m, I looked at your, your Instagram, so Titana, U s A, mm-hmm.
K I T A N I C A U S A. And and I look at the, look at it, and I know we’ve been talking about durability, right? But I’m looking at this right now and. I want this. I’m like, these, this jacket is amazing. I see the black one, I, I’m probably saying it wrong. Oh, the newest Mark series jacket. There we go. It’s beautiful.
It’s beautiful. Thank you. The Mark eight. I’m like, wow, this is a slick, like it’s, it’s, it’s great. And it has, it looks almost it has this feeling. You’re almost like the the couture of outdoors. Right. It almost has a custom feel and look, it’s awesome. Thank you. Thank you. That, that’s, I mean, kind of where we are.
It’s like, yeah. If you, if there’s a very serious design sense to what we make my brother’s a full genius. Like I said, he is been mm-hmm. making and customized and clothes forever. And he has this aesthetic that’s like this futuristic military mm-hmm. , but outdoor look, and I, you know, it kind of started.
There was a time and things have shifted a bit cuz tactical gear has really gone pretty mainstream. People are into it. Mm-hmm. and cuz it’s, it’s so functional and it looks cool and it, and it looks, you know, ready for anything. So. But it used to be like back when, when we started the company in the nineties, trail was all you could get trail looking stuff.
Mm-hmm. You know, I’m thinking the Reis of the world and like, from the East coast, it’s Eastern mountain Sports and just this kind of hiking, little bit granola. Mm-hmm. , not there’s anything wrong with that, but just kind of not aggressive, badass looking stuff. And that’s kind of where we came in.
We’re like, you know, these things can look, you know, Terminator, like out of a movie. And that’s kind of where Hollywood does come in, is that. Yeah, tell me, tell me about, tell me about the Hollywood ties, like how did all this come about? Well, they’ve, they’ve found us, well, first, first we. My brother was making this jacket called the Mark four, and we still make it.
It’s been redesigned since, but it was one of his early jackets and it had a spine pad articulated spine pad. It was green, like almost like the Hulk Green, and had a rifle recoil pad on the right shoulder. Double. It’s made of a thousand DeNure cordura. It’s got double layer shoulders and elbows.
It’s, it’s got fast clips with big plastic buckles down the front. So you can wear it unzipped and it can vent, but it’s really heavy duty and it has this giant collar with two cinches, two inches to cinch it down and stuff. And one of his buddies before he was famous, bought one and he was making a onesie twosie.
You know, like just kind of small run stuff. Mm-hmm. , we weren’t in like production mode. We didn’t have a factory. He was like a one man sweatshop, basically. Mm-hmm. and my brother and Adam Savage bought one of MythBusters fame. Mm-hmm. And so that was before he was on the show. And then he started shooting this show.
He got and took off and he, and so that Mark four is in all these episodes of MythBusters, like really early on in the internet. Yeah. We didn’t even know he was wearing it. My brother had no idea. I had no idea. and my cousin didn’t have any idea either. And and, and, and so one of his, my brother’s friends was looking for a current address for him and found out, found this whole stream in a forum that said like, who, who makes this jacket?
What is this thing? This thing’s amazing. I need Wow. And, and so, He reached out to my brothers, like, dude, you’ve gotta get online here and, and answer these people’s questions. They’ve got, they wanna know about the, anyway, so that started this whole thing down that road and that was the first kind of TV for foray.
And so since then we’ve gone on, you know, we’ve got other things on MythBusters, but we’ve also. have really good ties with Marvel. We’re in a bunch of Avengers movies. We have we’re the pants on the Rock in Jumanji, and so we’ve custom made those. So the wardrobe departments have found us, and because we’re vertical, we, we do, you know, we’re cut and sew operation, we design cut, and so, you know, we have in-house sewing and capabilities to, to make stuff.
Oh, . What’s funny is, so for that Jumanji movie, those are the green pants with the pockets that were famous for that design because it’s got these lap pockets, dual lap pockets left and right, and it’s got knee. Knee. We have Selma knee pad inserts, and they’re, they’re really heavy duty tactical pants.
And so he’s wearing them in the movie and so, The producers asked us to make a child’s version of that, which we obviously don’t have graded down to like really small sizes or anything , but we’re like, yeah, sure, we’ll make one. And so and so we made one pair of, yeah, pants just scaled it all down. And that’s again, my brother just.
Wow. He’s good. He, he’s a pattern maker. He is just like all that. Wow. Wow. So we made this lump pair and we never saw it in the movie. We thought there was gonna be like some sequence of him as a kid. Mm. In this Jumanji thing. And either they did that, we, this is our, we never saw it in the movie. So we, we figured they either had a scene that wound up on the editing room floor and they didn’t use the pants for that.
The, one of the directors, the, or somebody’s kid wanted to be Jumanji for Halloween and wound up with a pair of pants that took whatever, a hundred hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, but we’ve, yeah. So we’ve also been on the Rock in the Fast and Furious Wow. The show. But what’s interesting in terms of like business mm-hmm.
it’s hard to parlay those placements into. , you can’t really use, you know, the rocks likeness, I mean, on, on social. It’s loose and you can, but nobody’s gonna come after you necessarily, but mm-hmm. in terms of notoriety, you’re really just kind of working with the, the wardrobe people and Mm. Just trying to get more business that way cuz they buy them, so, you know.
Mm-hmm. But yeah, Marvel has a little Titanic, not a little, but it’s actually kind of substantial Titanic department in their wardrobe where there’s this little, like, we have a bunch of jackets cuz we know they’ve bought all these jackets for arrow and different shows they make. I, I don’t even know if that’s them, but, wow.
Anyway, the, yeah. So kind of, it’s kind of fun, but basically bragging rices is really what you get. or we have no, that’s to turn it into like cash money. But it’s cool. It’s certainly cool to be a part of it. We’re, we’re always stoked when they. Wow. That’s, that’s pretty amazing. Well, I’ll tell you this is an amazing story.
I’m, I’m happy to bring it to my, to my audience If and, and first off, great. I, I love bringing these type of entrepreneur stories to everyone, Chris, because I feel like it’s, it’s motivating, it’s inspiring, I mean, Family business mainly the us I mean, all these other things. It’s just great, great story.
That being said, it’s been great having you on the show. If somebody wants to learn more or if they want to want to connect and shop, what’s the best way for them to do that? Our website, titana.com. K I T A N I C a.com. You can also reach me directly at. titana.net C H R I. Fantastic. And, and we’re, yeah.
And we’ll put all of that information in the show notes, all the links and stuff like that. Cause I want my audience to check it out. And I, I saw a denim jacket as we were talking to. I’m like, oh, okay. And then you’re priced well too. So when, just to, so everybody knows, I mean, go check out the shop, go check it out.
But just because the rocks wearing these pants don’t mean, or a, a version of them, does not mean that you can’t afford them. Like, I was shocked when I saw the prices. Especially because you think about the price. Okay, it’s a little bit more than maybe a carhart or something, but you gimme one one of those jackets for life, you’re never gonna mess it up.
I mean, pays for itself as far as I’m concerned. So Awesome. We’ll put all of that information in the in the show notes again so that our, so that our audience can check it out. And speaking of the audience, If this is your first time with Mission Matters or listening to an episode, we’re all about bringing on business owners, entrepreneurs and executives, and having them share their mission, the reason behind their mission, and really what you can learn from that so that we can all grow together.
That’s the whole point of the Mission Matters platform is so that we can grow together as an entrepreneurial community and as a marketplace. Chris, really appreciate you coming on the show. Thanks again. Thanks, Adam.
