Al Perkinson: Building Bajio Sunglasses With Purpose and American Manufacturing

Full transcript of the Tom Rowland Podcast, Episode 738, with guest Al Perkinson, founder of Bajio Sunglasses.

From Banking to the Flats

Tom Rowland: Al, what's up, how are you?

Al Perkinson: Doing great, how are you, man?

Tom Rowland: Man, I am doing great, beautiful day in New Smyrna Beach?

Al Perkinson: It's like eighty and sunny, it's awesome, love it.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome, man, so, right before this I was doing a little homework, I looked at your website and also went back and looked at the show we filmed together, and I didn't think it was that long ago, but man, did I look young, and Rich looked young, you look young, we all look young, it's been a while, but I didn't realize it had been that long. Since then you've gone on quite a journey to where Bajio is today, it's incredible, how did this start for you, I look back at your LinkedIn and you had some banking in your background, how does it go from that to the fishing industry and then to Bajio today?

Al Perkinson: Yeah, it has been a long journey, I don't usually stop and reflect, it's just sort of going forward all the time, but it's fun on occasions like this to think back a little. I think I've always been in search of that situation that was ideal for me, that created the purpose I felt I needed in my life, and for a lot of us we never really find that, I've been lucky enough with Bajio for it all to come together, it's really gratifying and super fun. I think I've always wanted three things with my life, one is to use my life to do good, be selfless to a degree and use whatever resources or talents I have to make the world better, to help people. I've also always loved the outdoors, you know from the beginning if you have that gene, I was one of four boys, and growing up, exploration was the part of the outdoors that really tickled my imagination.

Tom Rowland: Where did you grow up?

Al Perkinson: I grew up in North Carolina, we moved around a little but I started in Charlotte, my brothers and I had a creek right behind our house, and every Saturday was a mission, the excitement of anticipation, what are we gonna find today, what are we gonna discover, our dreams were always a lot bigger than reality in this little suburban creek, but it was always there from the beginning. The other thing is creativity, I'm a builder, I love building things, creating things, and finding something where all three of those could be met and taken to the fullest extent has been the mission. Sometimes I feel like I've found all three, sometimes maybe one or two of three, but now it feels like it's all there, we're able to do good, we're able to build this thing from scratch, which is super amazing, and it's all about fishing and the water and the outdoors, that's kinda where we're at, and it's really fun.

Tom Rowland: Well it's really cool, because the sunglass business is a competitive business, but what we're using these sunglasses for is fishing, the water, specifically you seem to have chosen the flats and the shallow waters, in fact that's even the name of the company, right, that's what Bajio means?

Al Perkinson: Right, Bajio is the Spanish word, specifically Mexican word, for the shallows or the flats, and it's the saltwater flats with the beautiful water like in the Keys, The Bahamas that we know so much about, but it's also the marshes in Charleston and the bayous in Louisiana, the places where the young of the ocean are born and grow up in safety before they go out into the big water and have to battle the big boys. So it's really about protecting the young of the oceans and rivers and lakes, because that's the future, and they tend to be the most threatened because they're right up next to the land, and the land is where people live, where there's pollution, development, all these things that can negatively impact the water and the creatures in it. So that's kinda where we've chosen, from an intellectual and conservation standpoint, that's the area with the most need where we can put our resources, but it's also just where we love to fish the most, Marguerite and I are most at home on a panga in some foreign country fishing for permit or bonefish or tarpon or barracuda, that's probably our favorite at this point.

Building Bajio From Scratch During COVID

Tom Rowland: I'm curious about the entrepreneurial journey, how you create a company and get your purpose aligned with a mission, and then align that with a business model that allows for financial sustainability, and also environmental sustainability, what you've created is really interesting because I know it's not easy, there are tough choices, your packaging could be all recycled and good for the earth, or you could get the cheaper thing. When you're setting out to start this from scratch, how did you do that, when you're on the panga waiting for the tide to change, do you scratch things out on paper, do you have a vision of what it could be, and how has that changed over time?

Al Perkinson: It was a really interesting process, because I worked for another sunglass brand for a very long time and was instrumental in building that brand from a very small thing to a very big thing, and then I left because those three things I mentioned were getting either squashed out or reduced when the company was sold to a giant company, the purpose was getting replaced by profit, the creativity was getting replaced by a more low-risk, less creative approach, and the outdoors was getting replaced by the world of optical. So I went in search of those three things and landed at Simms, definitely in the outdoors there, living in Montana, which is amazing.

Tom Rowland: My boys are right there in Bozeman, I love Bozeman, my oldest graduated from Montana State, my youngest is still there, and my daughter goes to Auburn, but Bozeman, we make phone calls there every day.

Al Perkinson: Our daughter just graduated from Montana State too, what a great school, they hike and fish and have a great time, it's so great. But at Simms it was definitely about the outdoors, but it was a private equity deal, it wasn't really about mission or risk-taking, and the same thing at Hook, I was there for a short period. So we decided if we really wanted the life we wanted and be able to do the things we want to do, we're gonna have to start our own company, that's really the first part of the journey, selling yourself and convincing yourself you can do it, then convincing your wife and family they can do it too, Marguerite is my pure partner, we do everything together, but that was the first choice. Then, I'd never raised money before and didn't have a big bank account to fund it, so I had to go ask people for money, luckily I found a guy who knew the mechanics of doing that, he said bring me the people and I'll sign them up and get it done, so we started doing that and I was surprised at the reception, we just had a loose concept but a lot of people said, we're on board, we get it. But then COVID hit, and everybody put their checkbooks away and said let's wait a few months and see how this plays out. We were living in Charleston at the time, kind of locked in our house, and I had an office upstairs where we'd open the windows and the trees were rustling outside, this peaceful place, I'd sit up there with my dogs, and what I decided to do was just imagine, not be fettered by any can'ts or the smart business thing, just dream and imagine. I started writing stuff down, pulling pictures off Adobe, creating boards of pictures, and I'd be up there all day, then come down at five or six, grab a cocktail, put the PowerPoint up on the big screen TV, and make Marguerite sit through the presentation, and she'd criticize, no, no, maybe do this, or I like that, and we did that for three or four months, and I said, let's just imagine and see what that looks like, maybe it'll happen or maybe it won't. It was crazy that almost everything we imagined, once we put it up there, became doable, it wasn't really that hard, so this thing, we've improved it, made changes, but it's basically what we dreamed about up in that office in Charleston during COVID, it came to be.

Tom Rowland: Have you had experiences in your life before where you made a vision board or something like that and brought it into reality like this?

Al Perkinson: Yeah, I think that's kinda how I've operated, it's the vision first, I'm not like George Bush Senior who was like, that vision thing, I love the vision thing, I think that's what it's all about, and if you don't have that to organize your efforts and make them more efficient, beginning with the end in mind, I don't know how you do it, I don't know any other way to do it.

Tom Rowland: I'm kinda like you, I don't know any other way either, but a lot of people don't operate that way, don't have that in their background, of coming up with a vision, writing something down, taking pictures out of magazines to create this visual storyboard, and then maybe you put that away, come back years later and go, oh wow, this is the vision board I had ten years ago, and I've accomplished every single thing on it, it's astounding and amazing. So would you say COVID actually was a time for you to reset, refocus, and delve into this vision, that turned out to be a really productive time?

Al Perkinson: It really was, very fortunate, I did have a couple consulting projects I was working on in the fishing world, so it was all related, but it allows you to quiet your mind, make all the noise go away, and just think and imagine and dream, I think if it wasn't for COVID we'd be in a very different place than we are right now, and not as good.

Tom Rowland: Well, certainly in this situation that's for sure. As you're refining your vision and coming up with a better, refined pitch, how long did it take for people to pull their checkbooks back out and say COVID isn't going away but we're gonna start operating again, how long did that take for people to jump back on to raising money?

Al Perkinson: This would have been January, February 2020 when we made the decision we wanted to do this, put together a concept deck, wasn't really very good, and I got in my car and drove down to Florida and started having dinner and lunch with people, that probably happened in February and March 2020, and then COVID hit, literally the week I got back from my trip they shuttered everything. So it was probably three months, we went back out in May and June and closed on our first raise in July.

Building Everything In-House

Tom Rowland: That's cool, and since then, when you go to the website it's really incredible what you've built in such a small amount of time, explain the product line for somebody not familiar with your company, and how you decided to build this, because you're making the lenses right there in Florida, you told me that at Miami, that's pretty unique in the sunglass world.

Al Perkinson: Yeah, it's all kinda unique, you may or may not find this surprising, but in college I was a sculpture major, I was an artist, and I knew I could never be a full-time professional artist, I just didn't have enough talent, but I did think I could learn to be creative, learn to use the right side of my brain, not just the left. When you're doing a sculpture you have to work in the round, work on the whole thing at once, if you're doing a drawing it's two-dimensional, but with sculpture it's 3D, if you just work on one side the backside looks terrible and isn't connected, so it's a constant working in the round, in 3D, that's kinda how I approach this and everything really, working on all aspects at the same time, spending a little time on each but keeping moving, and that creates something cohesive. If you just build something cause-based that's gonna save the world but doesn't make money or isn't commercially viable, the whole thing's not gonna work, so all of those things have to develop simultaneously. We wanted it all to be one cohesive thing in service of using business for good, in our case to save the flats. Luckily I'd spent fifteen or twenty years in the sunglass business and fishing in the outdoors, so I knew the territory, knew what would work and what wouldn't, knew how we wanted to operate, and we wanted to build our glasses here for a couple reasons, one, it's just cool to build and design your own stuff, a lot of people just take off-the-shelf things, but we wanted to build our own so it fit us and our specifications. It's really cool to do stuff in our country, be independent and American made, we still have to get parts from all over the world because unfortunately the US has lost a lot of its manufacturing base, we're primarily a service economy these days, and my long-term dream is to build everything from scratch here, don't know if we'll get there, but at least we bring in the parts, cut the lenses, assemble everything, do quality control, do repairs, all right here. That was a value of ours, I also wanted to help the people who were here, three hundred people got laid off when the big European company bought the little sunglass company here in Daytona, and a lot needed jobs, we've been able to give a lot of those jobs back. But not just jobs, I really feel people should come to work every day super stoked to be there, we were talking about this the other day, when you have to put your corporate hat on during the day and take it off at night and be a different person, there's this disconnect in your life, and I wanna do away with that disconnect, I want people to be the same person at work as at home. So everybody feels like family here, everybody's a stockholder, I gave everybody a piece of the company, just gave it to them, they didn't have to pay for it. One of the gals downstairs asked how much I was gonna take out of her check each month for it, I said nothing, and she said, so it's a gift, I said yeah, you're gonna earn it because you gotta come in and work super hard, but you don't have to pay for it, and she said, damn, thank you, that's really nice. We have little things too, dogs running around, kids running around, you wear flip-flops, you're barefooted, we get together every Friday, hopefully more often eventually, for a family lunch, sit around a big table and eat lunch the company pays for, creating that environment and culture where people feel heard and nobody's afraid to speak up and tell me I'm crazy, which happens quite regularly, that was another value we wanted. And diversity, I think there's a lot of greenwashing out there, brownwashing if you want to call it, people just checking boxes and hiring consultants about diversity, but I honestly love having a diverse workforce, people with different accents and skin colors, it's just richer, more fun, I enjoy it, so we've made it a point to bring in people, in our little company we've got maybe twenty-five people now, from Cambodia, Mexico, France, Australia, Puerto Rico, Colombia, so many countries represented, we have a flag for each country hanging in the office, and when we hire someone new it's like, are they gonna add a flag to our office?

Staying Uncompromising on Purpose

Tom Rowland: As you have these different purposes and missions that are important to you, where have the challenges come in, things you thought were really important in the beginning that turned out tougher to implement than you thought, have you had moments where you abandon something or decide it's worth the fight to continue as part of your mission?

Al Perkinson: It's a constant balancing act, I'm kind of a purist in a lot of ways and a bit idealistic, and when you own and run the company you can't always be as idealistic, you need to be more pragmatic, but on the big things, on most things, we've been able to stay true to what we wanted, and in a lot of cases it's cost us a lot more. On sustainability, for example, I tell my team everything we make has to be sustainable, and they say, man, this box is gonna cost five dollars instead of fifty cents, and I say alright, we'll find a cheaper sustainable one, but we're just gonna have to pay more. I'm trying to think of where we've compromised, and honestly we haven't compromised a ton at this point.

Tom Rowland: Do you think that's part of the secret to the success you've enjoyed, that you're not compromising?

Al Perkinson: Yeah, I think that's probably true, we're in such a world of compromisers that everything is watered down and every position is massaged to be less objectionable to the most people, but I think people like specificity, they like particulars, you can make a big assumption or a big leap from something small, but you can't get to something small from something big, that's just how our brains work, so the more particular you can be, the broader appeal it'll have, which sounds like it doesn't make sense, but for example the flats is my personal passion, and Marguerite's personal passion, there's scientific reasons to protect it, but the sales guys are like, look, flats fishermen are a very small market, we need to appeal to the bass guys and offshore guys too, and I say, if we just say we're for all fishing out of the gate, nobody's really gonna respond to that, they're not gonna know what we stand for. So what I'd rather do is bring the bass anglers and offshore anglers to our cause, as opposed to us chasing them, so I'd ask, where do offshore guys get their bait, oh, they get it in the shallows, so what happens if the shallows aren't healthy and the bait goes away, no more sailfish, right. So the rub comes when you're trying to expand and grow and appeal to more people while having a specific message or cause, and for me making those connections is the way to do it, because you maintain the whole without compromising what you're standing for.

Tom Rowland: Well, it's working, it's certainly working, and I like the uncompromising position, I think that's really important and pretty rare these days. Tell me about the trails you're coming up with, we were talking about it at the Miami Boat Show, I really gravitated to that part because my boys are of the age they'd take part in something like this, like grabbing a backpack and getting a Eurail pass to backpack through Europe, but what you're saying is something that would appeal more to my boys, these fishing trails, what are you doing with these?

Building the Bajio Trails

Al Perkinson: As part of that original concept we hatched in the office in Charleston, inspiring young people has always been a really key part, related to conservation of the flats, because they're the ones who'll have to carry the torch going forward. Most of them know that, and some are kinda pissed off because they feel our generation has screwed up the world and now they gotta fix it, and they just wanna have some fun, not be a grown-up at twenty fixing the world, but I think there's a way to bring those two things together, if we can bring in exploration and the outdoors and let them do their thing. What struck me over the years is I've been fortunate to travel to amazing places, stay in amazing lodges, have great fishing experiences, meet local people, but I did it as part of work, I haven't had to personally write the check for five or seven or ten thousand dollars a week to go to these places, and I look around and most people who go to those lodges are wealthy financial guys, tech guys, older businessmen who've made their fortune. But how about the young guys, kids in college or their twenties trying to figure out who they are and what they want to do with their life, how can they do that, and the answer is they can't, so we've basically blocked off a huge, amazing aspect of fishing to young people. So the idea was to create an affordable way for young people to travel and fish, it's kinda like a harebrained idea, probably really hard to execute, and I guarantee it's gonna start out and be a shit show and we'll fix it as we go, that's just how I roll, I'd rather get it out there and have the pressure of public scrutiny force us to fix it than have it hatching inside forever. So we love the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, spent a ton of time down there, our brand name comes from Mexican Spanish, and we created our first trail called the Yucatan Trail, we went down there and road-tripped it, pulled in a couple local Mexican friends to help us navigate, started down in Xcalak at the very southern part of the Yucatan Peninsula, went up the coast around, hit Holbox, that whole circuit all the way back down to Tabasco on the southwestern side. We found about twenty-five towns that were fishable with good fishing, a lot of amazing snook fishing, tarpon, and around the east side a lot of permit and bonefish. We found people who could be our hosts or point person in each town, found some DIY fishing spots where you could grab your rod, go to the beach, explore, and fish with no guide, found some kids willing to guide for like twenty dollars a day, places to camp and stay for twenty or ten dollars a night, places to eat that are super cheap.

Tom Rowland: That is so cool.

Al Perkinson: But it's also an experience, because they're interacting with the local people, getting to know the culture. That Yucatan Trail goes all the way around, and we documented it on an app launching in about a month called the Bajio Trails app, you can go on that app and plot your own course, how long do you have to do this, and we'll recommend trails, you can pick your own, then reach out to people in the towns and say, I'm coming, be on the lookout for me, and connect with other people doing the same thing. Our grand vision is to build these trails all over the world, including in the United States, and create a community of trail goers just like backpacking and youth hostels in Europe, eventually maybe fishing hostels in some of these towns too, and we also want to make it a voluntourism type experience, so along the trail we'll put conservation projects, for example down in Xcalak you can go plant a piece of coral on a reef and watch it grow, clean up beaches, clean up sargassum and beach trash, plant mangroves, so in addition to fishing they can spend a day helping with conservation projects too, that's the concept, we'll be launching it soon, we'll see what happens.

Tom Rowland: Man, that's so cool, and I'm a builder too, not as good a runner as I am a builder, I like to build things, that gets me excited, and my tendency would be to take my eye off the ball of making and selling sunglasses and say, let's go make more trails, this is so fun, right, and I see you have that tendency too, but somehow you have this ability to balance these great ideas and not go too far, get them off the ground and moving but not lose sight of what drives all of this. It reminds me of Elon Musk, he's super smart, there's a lot of super smart people, but a lot of them aren't marketers, they're not communicators, they're not people who can raise money, they can build incredible things but don't have this other side of the brain, like the right side, left side you were talking about, that's what's so special about him, he can have this great vision, communicate it in a business sense, and build a company, people said nobody's gonna pay that much for a Tesla, he said, well, they're gonna have to, otherwise we'll go out of business, and what good is it if we go out of business, how are we gonna pass the torch to young people to go on these trails if we can't keep the sunglass company running? It seems like a really difficult thing, there are only a few unique individuals who can pull that off, and you seem to be one of them, it doesn't surprise me you were a sculptor or an artist, but you also have a banking and business background, those are rare talents for one person to have. Do you ever wish you could just go build trails full time?

Al Perkinson: Well, yeah, I think we built this company as the economic engine to drive our mission work, but if the economic engine isn't viable, isn't creating revenue and profits, it's not gonna work, so I'd rather be building a business with that purpose in mind, that's the motivational factor rather than just building it to make money for myself or stockholders. They all work together because you have this greater purpose, and everybody in the company comes in knowing that's what they're working for, so I think they're more productive, and purpose-driven companies are actually more profitable than non-purpose-driven companies, there's a lot of recent research on that, I saw something where they outperformed the S&P 500 by a hundred and eighty percent over the last ten years, and that's because it's all about human beings, human capital, and productivity, driven by motivation. If I'm walking into work and my CEO says, yes, we wanna return shareholder value, that's why we're working, let's go, let's get fired up, that doesn't do anything for me, and I don't think it does anything for most people. But if you're coming in and think, the money we make, the more we can do, alright, if I believe in that, I'll buy into it. In not-for-profits, I got my master's in not-for-profit administration, the thing they had was that motivation, their salary sucked but they got really good quality people because those people believed what they were doing was good, they believed in the mission. I think now this combination of for-profit companies who are cause-based and mission-driven get the best of both worlds, they can be profitable and pay well, but also get that extra motivation from people doing good.

Tom Rowland: Do you notice, when you see those stats about how a company like yours can outperform another based on mission, and you built this mission-based from the start, purpose-driven from the start, but a lot of companies just kind of attach themselves to something, what do you think the difference is between that and what you're doing, do you see a difference between attaching to a conservation organization after demonstrating for years you were basically for the stockholders, versus what you're doing?

Al Perkinson: Yeah, on the one hand, if they wanna write checks for these organizations, awesome, the only negative aspect is it sort of taints the folks who are really in it for the right reasons, because it's like greenwashing, all of a sudden everybody's doing it, and consumers feel kinda cynical about it, like they don't really believe it, they're just doing it for good optics. I don't really know the answer to it, but I do think for employees within those companies you have two very different experiences, the ones in the big corporation that's greenwashing probably feel pretty cynical, they may show up and pick up trash on a beach Saturday because they feel their manager would get upset if they didn't, but it's more extrinsically motivated than intrinsically, and I do think when you can motivate people intrinsically it's more powerful, better for everybody, and ultimately a self-powering situation, self-motivating, because you're planting something inside somebody that drives them no matter what the external situation looks like, whereas extrinsic motivation kinda works for a minute then goes away till they get more.

Tom Rowland: Right, also seems like you might be attracting the right kind of people to you, people looking for something more, something with meaning, this is something I really want to be part of, as opposed to, this is a company where I can get a decent salary and they make me drink out of a mental cup, whatever the flavor of the week is. One of the things I saw on the website was a five-year plan that had something to do with the Odyssey, tell me about the Odyssey and where that fits into the purpose of Bajio.

Al Perkinson: It started out pretty broad, the idea of the Odyssey, with the mission being to renew and help the flats throughout the world, so we went through Google Maps and started talking to my scientist friends, and what I found was nobody knows where all the flats in the world are, there's never been a book written that says here's all the flats, nobody's studied them as a special type of environment. My buddy Andy Danylchuk, who I've been friends with forever, a professor at an Ivy League school, said he'd been wanting to write that book forever, maybe we could work on it together, so that's kinda where it started, and then we broke it up into different ways we wanted to help, identified all the threats hurting the flats, and started on the mission. Our first trip was down to Xcalak, Mexico, the next to Honduras and Guanaja, an incredible spot, then we were scheduled for Cuba, but they closed that off because of everything happening there with COVID and riots. That mission is still there, but what I've figured out and refined is it's become the trails, the trail system is a very concrete thing, our mission at each of these flats around the world is to build these trail systems and put all the conservation on top of that, it becomes kinda like the foundation, so in our new website when it gets revised, it'll focus more on the trail system as the main first station of the Odyssey concept.

Tom Rowland: Cool, yeah, that's awesome. What's the temperature when you go to these new places and introduce the concept of trails, is it welcomed by the locals, or do they wonder what it is, I guess once you have one you can show examples of, this is what we do and how many people might come, that would help, but in that first part where you're explaining the concept, are the local towns and people welcoming or skeptical, what have you encountered?

Al Perkinson: There's a couple different aspects to it, if you're one of the fishing guides in Mexico, Jose and Sanflee and Nado and all those guys, I sat down with them and said, here's the concept guys, and I know you're guides and work out of a lodge, so I hope this isn't threatening to you, but let me ask you a question, who are your clients right now, and how old are they, and they said, well, they're pretty old, pretty old, and I said, okay, where's the next generation of clients coming from, and they said, I don't really know. And I said, so that's what this is about, and the second question is, all you guides are kinda getting old, who's gonna come in and be the next guides under you, and they said, I don't know man, a lot of the young people aren't interested in doing this at all, they wanna play video games or go off to America, and I said, okay, this project is about developing that next generation of saltwater fly anglers, and about developing that next generation of guides, we're gonna bring them here, and it's not gonna make you any money to start with, it's a long-term play, so let's say you want your kids to get involved in guiding, have them guide one of these kids for fifty dollars a day or twenty dollars a day, whatever, to get some experience, get hooked on it, connect with kids from other countries, and maybe that spurs them toward becoming guides, and they get it in two seconds, these guys get it and are all on board to help.

Tom Rowland: That's so different than the situation in The Bahamas where they were really coming down on tourists trying to DIY fish there, and it didn't work, I always kind of understood what they were doing, but it didn't seem sustainable to me at all. And it's pretty interesting they see that right away and are willing to help. As you move to other guides you don't know, in places you haven't spent a lot of time, you haven't developed the trust from these guys to be like, well, Al seems to know what he's doing, he's been doing this a long time, he's cool, he's never done me wrong, I'm gonna listen to him on this one. But when you move to a new place they don't know who you are, are you having the same kind of conversation, and are they as receptive as people who already know you?

Al Perkinson: Yeah, I feel like we're part of a community, and it's amazing how many people know each other and of each other, no matter where you go these folks are usually wearing American-made brands of gear, and they have customers who come from Flagstaff, Montana, to whatever saltwater flat it might be, so there's a fair amount of knowledge about the industry, they go online, look on the internet, so they know a lot of that. But the other thing that's really cool, an insight I've noticed over the years, is that we're all the same, they're parents and have kids and go through the same stuff we go through as parents here, their fourteen-year-old daughter's being a pain, their little guys are running around getting in trouble, we all face the same issues really no matter what our economic status or what country we're from, when it comes to family, economics, jobs, the environment, we've got a lot more in common than not, so you just talk to folks on a human level, and I swear I've never been to a place where these were aliens who didn't get it, we're all humans, we all get it.

Tom Rowland: That's awesome, man, I love the idea of the trails, I just love it, my son right now just planned a trip down to Patagonia, he's gonna be walking one of the trails down there, what he really wanted to do was find a place where he could walk and fish, that's what he set out to do, and had this program been a little more mature, or your app had been out, or he knew somebody who'd done this, he would've been a really good candidate, because this is kinda what he wanted to do, put on a backpack and walk and get out and see cool stuff, he'll sleep anywhere, doesn't care, he wants to go. As soon as you started talking about that I thought, man, that is so awesome, I know so many other kids who want to do that kind of stuff and end up doing something different, taking a job somewhere, and that's cool, but what they really wanted to do was walk and fish, and that's what you're creating, it's super cool.

Al Perkinson: Yeah, I do think, not to get too philosophical, but when you're in that life stage of your twenties now, the twenty year olds of today are a little different than yesterday's, they've delayed getting married and having kids until their thirties, and in their twenties they're really trying to explore and find what they're passionate about, and they're finding it hard to do, because growing up, us baby boomers have not let our kids out of the house without an escort, we've got all these organized sports with amazing uniforms, when I played sports as a kid it was some old gym shorts and maybe a t-shirt with the team's name on it, now they look like miniature major league players and the fields are manicured, we played on dirt fields with rocks on them, the ball would jump over your head after hitting a rock, now they've got grass fields, it's crazy, helicopter parenting is the hallmark of the baby boom generation, and what it's done is robbed a lot of these kids of finding out who they are and what they're really passionate about. I hear college kids all the time say, I read that passion's really important, what's passion, I don't have it, I think I need it. So anyway, I think at a higher level this makes it easier for them to get out and explore the world and find themselves, that's kinda the motto.

Tom Rowland: Wow, and then maybe become a lifelong outdoors person.

Al Perkinson: Exactly.

Tom Rowland: And that's what we need, because young people are the ones who are gonna take care of it, I always think it's so important to have people fishing and going outside, hunting, fishing, hiking, backpacking, because they actually care and know what's out there, as opposed to not knowing about it. It's one thing to say there's less pressure, but there's also less voices, less people taking care of the environment because they actually know that swampland has huge bass in it, or that marsh has tons of redfish, or that flat, that shallow water where you beach your jet ski, no man, that's where the bonefish live, that's super cool, and otherwise they don't know what's up there and don't care, and when it comes to putting up another strip mall they just put it right next to it, because it's not important to them. What's interesting about this whole story is it all started with you looking at this creek as a kid, and you said what was important to you was exploration and the outdoors, and you came full circle, and now what's important to this company is exploration and the outdoors, it's really cool to see you manifested so much through COVID to build this company, but it seems like you've been manifesting it all your life, honestly, you've been interested in exploration and the outdoors, and you're bringing that full circle to building something that's a vehicle for many other people to hopefully experience the same exploration in the outdoors, it's pretty cool, really cool.

Al Perkinson: Well, thanks, I hope so, I hope it works.

Tom Rowland: It seems to be working. But congratulations, man, it's really cool to see the success of this company in such a short amount of time, you're in tons of retailers all over the country, people are embracing it, and it's really based upon a purpose and mission that's close to your heart, that's super cool, awesome, right on. Where do people find your website, and find the product and support the company or buy a t-shirt or whatever they wanna do?

Al Perkinson: Yeah, on the trails thing, we wanna make this sort of a crowdsourced deal, so if you have ideas, like, this would be a great trail and I'd love to help build it, just contact me, al@bajiosunglasses.com, super easy, love to hear from people on that. If you wanna buy products or check them out, just go to bajiosunglasses.com, or our Instagram or Facebook, learn about us there, pretty simple.

Tom Rowland: Awesome, man, well thanks for coming on and telling your story, it's awesome, I'd love to have you on again, especially as this trail project matures and your app comes out, I just think it's the coolest thing ever, man, it's awesome.

Al Perkinson: Well, thanks, Tom, I really appreciate it, super fun conversation, we didn't have to talk about the details of the sunglass business too much.

Tom Rowland: Oh, well, you didn't even tell me about your super awesome lens that can help you see fish ten feet further.

Al Perkinson: We'll get to that next time.

Tom Rowland: Thank you, actually, I'm really interested in the way that you built it, I think it's super cool, that's how I've done things too, just have a vision and somehow that vision comes to life, I don't know exactly how it works, but you have the same skill or talent or special superpower, I don't know what you call it, but it's pretty impressive, and the way you built this in such a short time is awesome, so good job, we'll get you back on again, and in the meantime, if you wanna check it out, check out Bajio Sunglasses. Alright, that's cool, man, thanks, Al, appreciate it.

Al Perkinson: Thanks, Tom, and we'll see you guys next week.