Discover the creator of Treezyn camouflage, Cobb Sanders. Designed by Cobb himself, the camo features the evolution of modern-day hunting apparel. Cobb talks about how he came up with this concept and how the hunting industry has welcomed his creation. You can hunt with confidence knowing that you are wearing the most versatile, silhouette vexing camo pattern available today. You not only just blend in, but you become.
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Treezyn Creator Cobb Sanders – Become
It’s a pleasure to introduce you to Cobb Sanders. He is the Founder of Treezyn. It’s a new and slightly different camo pattern that I’ve been fortunate to use. I’ll be using it in the coming rut this fall in the Midwest. Cobb is an interesting gentleman. He’s got a mind that doesn’t forget. He’s creative and he brought all the patterns to life. I can’t say anything more about that, his creativity. Enjoy Cobb Sanders, Founder of Treezyn.
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I’m happy, pleased and excited to have Cobb Sanders, the Designer, Founder and Owner of Treezyn. Cobb hails from Kentucky. Cobb, welcome to the show.
Thank you, Bruce. I’ve been looking forward to coming on the show and talking with you. I appreciate greatly Whitetail Rendezvous for having me on. I’m a big fan.
We love having you here. Tina Kane is the Executive Director. Cobb and Tina helped me out with my sheep hunt and it was a great hunt. The camo worked fine. You’ll be seeing more of that stuff coming down the road but his stuff works. That’s the simplest thing for me to say. I’ve been hunting whitetails for over 50 years. I’m celebrating my 50th anniversary. Why does it work? Let’s jump right in and tell me why Treezyn works?
Sending out on this to start a camo, I wanted something that would break the human silhouette bigger. I wanted to a softer, natural element and the course come into play to make this pattern what it is. We’ve nailed it with this late-season brown pattern. We do get the bigger breakup. The color quadrants are different and it seems highly effective. All the testing and the reviews have been outstanding and we’re proud of that fact. Essentially, it comes down to the bigger breakup. I didn’t like what I saw in all the other camos out there. I decided maybe I should make my own the way I like it. Thankfully the way that it has come out in a way that we put the final stamp on it, I’m not the only one that liked it. That’s always a good thing in business.
You might say that for sure. Here you are 100% with your background. Tell the readers what your background is, not your hunting condition, but just what you’ve done for a career.
I’m an industrial technologist. I fix and make, break, design all things in the manufacturing industry. These are all of the machines and equipment that keep this American cog rolling. That’s what I’ve done since I’ve gotten out of college. Even as a child, I could draw well, I saw things a little differently. The combination of my artistic gifts, and then my other side of the brain works when it works. Everything has to be symmetrical and everything has to be right. I’m meticulous when it comes to that. It forged together at this point in my life to create whatever this is inside of me that we get out and get on these patterns that just works. It comes together aesthetically pretty but functional. When it’s going against the animals outside, it seems to work well in the woods or even out in the open. It’s breaking up that human silhouette, which is the key.
When people see your stuff in the store, it’s different. When I was hunting, people go, “What’s that? Where did you get that pattern?” I said, “It’s Treezyn. Go to the website, Treezyn.com and check it out because it’s different. I like things that are different.” You’re competing in a huge industry. It’s a billion-dollar industry, the outdoor industry and to carve out a niche, you’ve got to be good at what you do. The product has to be there. Everybody will buy something once. You and I know that because it looks good, feels good, price right, but it’s the long-term that you’ve jumped in both feet. “I’m going to develop a pattern that’s going to be here for long-term and every so eighteen months, maybe it’s two years, I’m going to bring out an enhancement or something to fill out my line.” When I think of it, the grassroots and how you’re growing, how does that all come? You’ve been out there working but I don’t think any other companies even developed an apparel company, what makes you so special?
Where you have to win in this industry and even people and consumers. We hit a home run, in my personal opinion, and someone can argue and that’s fine. In the three areas especially in camouflage, you absolutely have to grab people. You’ve got to grab them by your name and Treezyn is a great name for a camouflage. You have to grab them by logo, something that looks good just on marketing where something looks good on a cap or on their jacket, even if it isn’t your camouflage pattern. A casual lifestyle type of wear. You’ve got to have a pattern that’s appealing too. You’ve got to have a pattern that is functional and when it’s sitting on the shelf or it’s on that hanger in the store, people got to go, “I like that.”
When you kill a deer or any animal, you’ve taken a life. It’s a bittersweet moment. Share on XI couldn’t even know a percentage, but there’s got to be a large percentage of people that buy because they’ve liked what it looks like. The minute they go out into the woods and to them it seems to do a good job, then you compound that. If they get fortunate enough to harvest their prey, then the combo is, “I liked the way that looks. It worked good and I was successful.” Where we have an edge and we do win, name, logo and look all catchy, all different, a hybrid and modern take on camouflage apparel. This is my version and my opinion, and it’s where we win.
Why some people are drawn to Treezyn and other people may be drawn, but they don’t make the grade. They’re not able to join the team. How does that work?
What are you talking about joining the team, becoming staff or officer?
Become a Pro Staff or Treezyn tribe or the people that are supporting you out in the field, and those types of people.
Every company, you only have so many positions. You can’t have an unlimited position with Pro Staffer officers or field staff. We’re still relatively new. Our Pro Staff consists of people that either I have known for a long time and know and trust this person. I know which man or woman they are. Their industry resonates, speaks for themselves and we have gotten to know them in the past years. We use an analogy here of a relationship. Being in this position, you get emails, you get a ton of people, “You need us. We need five outfits and $2,000 because you need us,” that kind of thing.
You can’t say yes to everyone. It’s like a relationship and dating that’s the equivalent of showing up, “You meet me and do you want to get married?” but I don’t know you. We do things a little different. We want to step back and get to know people, work with people. See if we’re a good fit and see if they’re a good fit and move forward that way. As far as the executive officers and Pro Staff and field staff, there are only so many positions. You hope and pray that you make the right decisions when you bring people closer to you to work with on a daily basis. So far within this company, the way we’ve approached it and why we’re doing it works for all of us. It’s an absolute joy and you don’t mind when we see our staff’s names pop up on your phone, you don’t like dealing with these people and they’re good folks doing great stuff.
What’s the best way to put somebody to reach out to you, take a look at your product, buy your product or just get in touch with you because they get some ideas or do you get some interest? How do they do that?
In this day and world of modern technology, Facebook, internet, Twitter, whatever, we’re reachable. Within five minutes, we’re right back on you and in a conversation and probably not everyone’s busy. We’ve got a lot of stuff but we do try to get back with everyone as we get around to it, but it’s easy to reach. You can reach us if you go on the website, www.Treezyn.com . There’s a Contact Us tab that all you have to do is click on and email comes directly to my email account. You can get in touch with the staff via Facebook. It’s pretty simple. We’re not hiding from anyone. We’re doing what we do. We’re out there in the public and easy to reach.
We talked a little bit about Uncle Carol and how he started in your hunting tradition. Let’s go back and share some of those early days with Uncle Carol.
He’s a Mercer County native in Kentucky. As a child, he and my aunt took me in after their son left. I was six or seven, I started spending weekends and summers with them. They lived on a dairy farm. He had several hundreds of acres that he farmed, raised corn, cattle, and on top of that milk twice a day. I’m always struck not having a father. Here is this strapping man and I remember when he was my age. He was taking care of me as a little boy and bringing me up. He had this wavy hair. They have some Native American blood and he was dark-complexioned, strong and he fascinated me. On top of that, he was a hunter and a great shot.
Me growing up in the ‘50s and ‘60s, telling all his hunting buddies to get in the truck. These guys would drive out west to Iowa and Nebraska State. They love to bird hunt. They would pheasant hunt. I remember him telling this to his friends and they would go up and knock on doors, “Can we hunt in your farm?” More often than not, the people would invite you into the house. They invite you to eat with them, a lot of times stay with them, and you made a friend. Can you imagine that? Driving those homes, knocking on the door, you’re going to have a pistol in your forehead or they’re going to have the law on you. I remember those stories. We would go hunting. I would always have to shoot squirrels out the net with my BB gun so they could shoot them with their .22.
They got me started that way and the camaraderie, it grew. As I got older, they would take me hunting or let me go hunting. I was growing up in the ‘80s, no one in my family deer hunted. He has properties that have deer on them. We started getting the deer areas in this part of Kentucky. I’m thirteen or fourteen years old and was like, “I want to go deer hunting.” It’s like, “We can give you a rifle. Be careful.” It seems like it’s a different time. I’m not that old of a person. It’s a different era or maybe I caught the tail end of a good era of hunting and stories. How it used to be and maybe I romanticize that a little bit, but it sticks with me. My love and admiration for him and then my love for nature, the outdoors and hunting, it all came together. That was the introduction of the good ones.
People ask me, Tina’s asking, “What’s your story?” Sitting here, I wanted to hear about Uncle Carol. He taught me how to drive his truck back in the ‘50s because I am old and he took me. I had to work, he sold green for Eastern states. I had to go out and sweep out. We found his office and we bought the warehouse. When it got bigger, he’ll be with a twenty-pound bag and bring it in, chicken scratch or whatever, and bring it to the guy’s truck. I was just always hanging around because I knew there was an apple pie waiting for me. There was a trout stream waiting for me. There was a twenty-gauge single shot waiting for me when we jumped in the truck and went to the old homestead. He empowered me to love hunting.
What I love hunting, probably it was like yourself. I knew I was going to be a hunter. There weren’t any questions about it. I killed my first chickadee over bread crumbs with a rubber band and a paperclip. I cried because I killed it. I’m dead serious. I was probably in eighth grade and I said, “How am I going to do this? I couldn’t catch up with the rabbits and they didn’t like my box traps or snares.” One day I saw chickadees coming down from this bush. I got underneath a pine tree and spread out some stuff. I sat there and then they come in and I go and I’d miss. I cried and I said, “I just killed something. I’m sorry.” I dug a hole and I buried it, but it never left me because I was a hunter.
It’s the same for me. That’s funny, you talk about that shotgun being a reward. When I was about six or seven, they dug this huge pond on their farm. There was a spring, one of the creeks in the western part of the county. The spring was on their farm and it was a huge pond. About the time that I was starting to get independent as a boy and out in the woods, eleven, twelve, thirteen years old, this pond was maturing in age. I was getting good at fishing. I would go down there with the BB gun at .22 and .410 and that’s what people seem to do then in the country. You go out and you learn. You would watch and take things in, you would learn how to shoot yourself. I’m sure we made some mistakes on form and style, but you came into your own. I loved that he would let me go. When it was time to go bird hunting or squirrel hunting, rabbit hunting, “Let’s go. Go get the twenty-gauge, the twelve-gauge and we get the dogs.” It’s something that I hope if anything leaves me in my life, I don’t want my memories to go stuff like that.
We talked about hunting, what’s the naturalist part of you? Where did that come from?
I have a real appreciation and most hunters do, for nature and that circle of life. I don’t know about you but you’re talking about crying on your first kill. When you kill a deer or any animal, a large mammal, you’ve taken a life. That’s a big life. Although you’re a hunter, you’re excited to have taken this animal. It’s a bittersweet moment. You’ve taken a life of that size. I think naturalist is the right word. I have an appreciation for nature. I don’t want to kill recklessly or aimlessly. When it is time to kill, I take a lot of pride in my ability to make the shot.
I would hope that we’re all confident of our own abilities to perform at that moment. I know I am. I’ve done this for years and know my ability to shoot and to come through. That all goes hand in hand. It’s that appreciation for Earth, for life and for God’s creation. It pulls them together. I don’t want to say shoot it, that’s saying it should be like this for everyone, but for me that it does come together. That’s the best way I can sum that up. You hear people talk about that moment understanding that sunrise or sunset, but when I hear people say that I know exactly what they’re talking about because that’s the way I experienced it as well.
Cobb is building a brand and when you think about it, it’s not easy. If you read his bio and everything, it’s not easy. Highlight it because there are some people out there saying, “I want to do something in this industry, I want to do something that’s going to make a difference for me, my family and my friends. I want to make some money.” Before the money, you have to create. Where do these creative images come from?
We don’t have that solid answer. You hear people, even when I started doing this, they’re like, “I love to do that. I want to work.” There’s a big misnomer out there to readers and people who don’t know the industry. Once you get inside here and you hear things and say things on the outside, before I got involved in this, there are times I’m like, “This got to be the coolest thing ever, to make money hunting.” I love hunting and what a better way to make a living than hunting. We all know that’s not the case. There’s a large number of those people you see on television. They’re out, they love to hunt. They’re working hard to get sponsors and money to put their product out there for people to see. That’s a big misnomer like, “All I’ve got to do is get a show and I’m making money in the industry.” To make money in this industry, like any other commerce or categories, you have to have a product that people want. That’s hands down.
To make money in this industry, like any other commerce or categories, you have to have a product that people want. Share on XYou’ve got to have something that they want. We do and it’s growing. Our product lines are growing. Our base is growing. Our development of new products is growing as we grow. You better have an idea. You better have the patience, the money, and the strength to push that all the way to fruition. It takes everything. It takes time. It takes money. It takes patience and drive. A lot of people quit. The only difference for me at this point is I haven’t quit. I believe in my heart of hearts that we’ve got a product here that not everyone has to like it or it doesn’t have to appeal to everyone. In a multi-billion-dollar industry, you don’t need everyone. You need enough. I’d take 1% then I’d start scratching for 1.25%. “Here we go we’re throwing, free of charge, through the roofs.” With the acquisition of Bass Pro and Cabela’s for $5.5 billion.
They started off Sidney, Nebraska, two guys selling supplies. Nobody’s buying, they gave the supplies away and charged $5 for shipping and handling. That’s how they started. It wasn’t a mega store. It was a couple of guys saying, “Let’s do this so we can go fishing.” They did it and if you hang around there and I’ve been fortunate enough to hang around Sidney a little bit and had some of the people from that company. All of a sudden you go, “It wasn’t easy at all.” They had a Cadillac business and everybody who had stock would work for the company and still working. They made a couple of bucks for the investment. It doesn’t come easy. I know a lot about Cobb’s journey and his first order blew up in his face. He paid for it. He couldn’t sell it. What are you going to do? Tell us a little about that dark day or night or dark week. How did you get through that?
That was a tough day because at that point in time, I worked for a living. I’m not independently wealthy. I didn’t have huge financial resources. I had taken everything that I could get together, with working, living with paying bills and do the norm of what people do. I’ve been working on this and it was time to build some clothes. I had to go where we could get smaller orders. We didn’t have money to build a commercial type order. Long story short, the samples they sent were very strong, feeling happy, feeling good about everything. We go ahead full force, let’s do this with a big whopping order. It was big to me at the time. You have some stuff lined out. We had some shows. We had TV stuff going on. It was going good until the order came in and when we opened up the box, it was our late season brown and everything was green. I don’t know how I drove home from my friend and Vice President Matt Mitchell’s house and made it all the way to Georgetown without stroking out or having a heart attack.
I don’t remember the draft because that’s your first reality check. All my money was spent. The product is not right. I’ve got people paying online for this stuff. Fortunately, sometimes you need a break. After I cleared my head and took this stuff outside, I was so frustrated and I just laid it on the ground lined it up in a tree and the green didn’t look too bad. It had a decent look to it. It wasn’t what I want at all, it was the opposite but at the same time a handful of people on this planet knew that it was supposed to have been brown and not green. I took a chance and went to a show in Columbus. It was supposed to have set it up in the booth with the store and things like these. I have some things up there. They were waiting on it and I didn’t even take it in. I kept it in the truck. Some of the guys that were supposed to get it, “Where’s the stuff? Where’s the gear?” We’ve had some bad luck.
It’s horrible telling the story or having to tell them you feel terrible because you want it to work. “I don’t know if you got to like this, if you want to, we can walk outside.” It was the middle of the winter, it’s freezing. Right at the end of the show that day, guys were coming to the truck, I’m pulling stuff out of the boxes and people start buying the stuff like crazy. I look like a crack dealer on the back of my truck. People are coming out and we’re meeting people. We did a lot of business that day on the back of the truck with a wrong green order first order of Treezyn, and that was the first real infusion, “Even if this stuff is wrong, people are wanting it.” There are two things, and two-fold. We do have a product. The name, the look, the people want. I want to spend money on clothes and products. It worked out. I can’t believe it if you ask me about that.
Tina Kane is the Executive Director for Treezyn and I had her on the show. Like I told her, you guys haven’t even started yet because you’re in the billion-dollar industry. You read about being a fledgling company and you’re getting so much traction from the people that you’re attracting. What type of people are you looking for to take a look at Treezyn to become part of your journey?
It’s different. You want the consumer. The consumer doesn’t fit into a category except this consumer has money to spend on your product. You can moralize or compartmentalize like, “This guy does this or this is a good guy, a bad guy.” It’s nothing like that. When we let the hunter and the outdoors person, if they’re on the look, if they’re tired of everything they’ve been seeing, which is why I created Treezyn. I thought everything had gotten a little stale and there are some good companies out there. There are some good new camos and stuff that’s come along from the other big two and it’s exciting. I’m not a hater type of individual. I’m not afraid of these guys or I don’t worry if I see a new company or new patterns. We worry about us and I know what we put out and it’s a big industry. There’s room for a lot of us here but that being said, I would hope that we bring people on that have that mindset as well.
I don’t want to define a person as a Treezyn guy that you just have to wear Treezyn. I know me, if you walk in my basement and get my big duffle bag, I haven’t thrown away all the other companies stuff that I used to wear or anything like that. It’s a mixed bag of all kinds of camos and we want that same guy. I don’t want to meet that other version of me out there to come and look and get some piece of Treezyn to add to his hunting arsenal. That’s about all I can say. They don’t have to be dressed head to toe, socks, underwear in Treezyn but make it part of your hunting arsenal. It works. We work in about any environment, but there are some other camos that do that as well. That’s what we’re looking for. That person that’s open to using a tool or make him better for that day or for that hunt.
Thank you so much for that. Give a shout-out. I know you can’t cover the waterfront. Do your best you can.
I would say thank you for Robin Gates for keeping me going, for feeding me, putting up for my vainness. For Matt Murphy, Tim McCain, Doug Deharpart, Mike Pearce, Joe Willis, Todd Duff, Matt Moore, all these people that are involved with this company directly or indirectly that make us what we are, they’re great people. They’re easy to talk to, easy to approach. They’re good ambassadors for what we’re wanting to do. We want to make cool camos, cool clothes, sell it, be productive, be profitable as a company and see where the journey takes us.
Cobb Sanders, on behalf of thousands of people across North America that follow Whitetail Rendezvous, thanks so much for grafting me into the Treezyn family. It’s been a ride so far. I can’t wait to get the ATA and see where the buzz goes. Whenever we can do here in Whitetail Rendezvous, you always got a friend, so thank you.
Bruce, once again thanks to Whitetail Rendezvous for having me and paying attention to this sad story from this guy from Kentucky.
Important Links:
- Treezyn
- www.Treezyn.com
- Facebook – Treezyn
- Tina Kane – previous episode