Paul Hunter was up watching the news after midnight when a story came on about teddy bears given to families of fallen soldiers. Teddy bears are nice and all, Hunter thought, but they’re a bit childish and gentle.
Families should be given something reflecting a soldier’s personality, professionalism and bravery. His mind wandered to bowties, a dapper representation of all three. Inspired, he drove to a 24-hour Walmart, where he bought a sewing machine at 1 a.m.
When he got home, Hunter pulled out an old military uniform from his closet, trimmed cloth from it and attempted to make a bowtie with the aid of YouTube tutorials.
He had to leave the tie unfinished around 4 a.m when sleep could no longer be evaded. But that midnight impulse didn’t fade the next day. Instead, it grew bigger, transforming into a hobby, then an incorporated company, and last month, a ticket to the 69th annual Emmy Awards, where Hunter handed out 400 bowties to celebrities in a gifting suite.
“It has been insane ever since,” he said. “Stuff that I never, ever, ever, ever could have imagined. People wore our bow ties to the Emmys. It was crazy.”
The 22-year-old junior at Regis University described his journey as serendipitous. But close friends described it as something more.
“He is the most lucky and unlucky guy I’ve met,” his friend and company’s chief operating officer Charlee Riggio said with a laugh. His life will crumble, she said, and then it builds itself back up.
Hunter recounted the start of Repurpose Bowties recently over coffee at Denver Central Market while sporting a bright-blue bowtie. He laughs, noting that he didn’t wear bowties before that night watching the news three years ago.
Repurpose sells bowties made of recycled fabric from old clothing, upholstery, curtains and other found fabric. Hunter originally made bowtie shadow boxes for families of fallen soldiers. But then people wanted to wear the ties. As more people saw the ties, more people wanted their own. At his first trade show, Hunter nearly sold out of his 400 ties.
“I made these in my living room just for fun, and then all of a sudden people are digging it, and that’s weird to me,” Hunter said.
But when Hunter received a call from a woman who said she stumbled across a bowtie in Los Angeles and wanted him at the Emmy’s gifting suite, he dismissed it as a scam. After a bit of research that confirmed her story, he was shocked.
The Repurpose team worked hard to build up inventory in the months leading up to Emmys to prepare for an anticipated bump following the award show. The company still sold out in the week following. Stores are also reaching out to donate their scraps — a surprise for the Repurpose team.
“It was this out of body experience,” he said. “I was on cloud 79. It still hasn’t even hit me really.”
Hunter is buzzing with ideas, works well into the night and talks his friends’ (and strangers’) ears off about Repurpose, Riggio said.
He has an entrepreneur’s spirit. Or, as his Regis mentor Ken Sagendorf said, “He’s got a personality that controls the room.” It’s fitting considering Hunter admired entrepreneurs in high school and topped a bucket list with the goal of owning a company by age 21.
A rapid ascent
At the end of high school, Hunter was periodically homeless, couch surfing and living out of his car. He was struggling with his parents; it was a relationship that wasn’t faring well after he came out as gay. Housing prices were high and only increasing as jobs with living wages were in short supply.
Hunter parked in the lots behind suburban churches at night, moving his clothes to the front seat and laying down a sleeping bag in the back. He described the experience on a GoFundMe page, saying each passing headlight brought with it fear that someone may come to tell him to move along. He showered at a public gym and spent days moving from coffee shop to coffee shop to stretch his legs.
He had been accepted to Regis University but put it off. He sold his car and moved to Honduras to teach elementary school with a faith-based organization.
While there, he posted a photo of him and his boyfriend on Facebook. Then he was called in for a talk: His relationship did not fit the mission and values of the organization. He needed to take down the post or leave. Hunter was flying home a couple days later.
“I could make this really easy and I can just take it down,” he said. “But it was such a bigger issue than that. (It was about) standing up for not only myself but people like me who are in a similar situation.”
The stress of organizing his way home took a toll. But the personal attack on his identity took a deeper one. His sudden departure further strained his and his family’s relationship, and he was couch surfing once again.
Three or four months later, Hunter was living with two friends when he watched that fateful news program, sending him down his bowtie path. Or maybe he was already halfway down the lane by that point.
The relationships and community Hunter built during those times of housing uncertainty ended up propelling him. It was through those connections that he found people who could sew the bowties, businesses to stock them and friends to model the product.
Repurpose’s business ideals were partly crafted then, too. It’s not just a company to him. It’s an opportunity to help the environment by reusing fabric. It’s an education on the fast-fashion industry and mass consumption. It’s a way to provide livable wages to the people who sew, who are all local and include refugees, LGBTQ+ youth and other minorities.
Hunter had felt disconnected for so long, Sagendorf said. This company was a way for him to help others feel connected.
The company runs off an Uber model. He provides people with the fabric and sewing machine. He then buys the individual bowties from them. This way, he can hand-deliver the material and get to know the them, which he prefers to filling out an order slip for a sewing shop.
His payment structure is set up so they can make close to double minimum wage, he said. But that means his margins are slimmer — a problem investors won’t see past, frustrating Hunter.
“The sewing industry here in the U.S., specifically here in Denver, pays minimum wage, so nobody wants to go into it. It’s sad because it’s an art,” Hunter said.
Sagendorf, director of the Innovation Center at Regis, said the young mom-and-pop company is at a juncture. The center matched $5,000 to help front some of the cost for Repurpose to ramp up inventory ahead of the Emmy’s. There are back-end issues that come when a company tries to expand, and those need to be resolved. But if Repurpose can figure it out, he said, the company has a tremendous future ahead.
“Entrepreneurs build the business based on themselves,” Sagendorf said. “And he has to decide if he keeps it to himself or he shares.”