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13 March 2023

I’m more confident in the future of CIVVIESUPPLY than I’ve ever been before. We soared to record growth in 2022, achieving a 500% revenue increase from 2021. We saw our wholesale program expand tremendously, adding the following museums to our list of current customers: the National WWI Museum, the National WWII Museum, the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, the USS Hornet Museum, the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot Museum (San Diego), the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, the 82nd Airborne Division War Memorial Museum, and the International Spy Museum. We printed over 7500 shirts on behalf of these museums alone during the year. 

We successfully earned official trademark licenses with the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force. Each application averaged between 70-100 pages and took several months to complete. These licenses open the door to a number of opportunities on the wholesale and retail side and ultimately help to increase the brand’s exposure.

We also moved warehouses twice! Since 2020, a third party logistics agency in Charleston, SC had managed our inventory and fulfillment, but we’d wanted to move that back in-house for some time. After leaving active duty in early 2022, we finally had the chance to bring it back in-house, and by November, we’d settled down enough to make the switch. At that time, we used spare space and a garage at my brother Franklin’s office until we found a more permanent solution in January. 

On February 1st, I moved into a warehouse owned by a friend and mentor, allowing us to print, house, market, and fulfill under one roof for the first time ever. This new arrangement has sent our production capabilities through the roof. And after a website relaunch in December, we’ve seen year-to-date growth that’s on pace to break new company records, with current projections showing at least a 200% increase from 2022 by the end of the year.

As I write this today, I’m looking ahead to a number of different initiatives:

• Store-wide Restock: I know it’s frustrating to see your favorite product out of stock for weeks on end. We’re working on this! We hope to have every product listed on our website back in stock by early May, so stick with us!
• Best Ranger Competition: we’ll be sponsoring this year’s competition for the second time, only this year we’ll be there in person to watch. We’re currently in the process of producing a custom, Ranger-inspired design, so be on the lookout for that to drop soon!
• Navy-licensed Collection: we’ve completed an initial batch of officially licensed Navy designs, and we’re incredibly excited to be releasing these in the next few weeks. There are no guarantees in life, but we’re hopeful we’ll add the USS Constitution Museum, the USS Midway Museum, the USS Iowa Museum, and the USS Intrepid Museum to our list of wholesale customers in the coming months.
• Patriotic Collection: we’re expanding our Patriotic Collection with 7-10 new designs, and we’re in the process of putting the finishing touches on those. I don’t want to give away too much before the grand reveal, but some of the design concepts include the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” USA hockey victory over the USSR, the Lucky Strike cigarette company, Teddy Roosevelt’s “Man in the Arena” speech, and the Prohibition-era “We Want Beer” signs. 
• Air Force and Space Force Collections: we’re in the early stages of creating these collections, but they should be released and in-print by this summer. 
• Army-licensed Collection: we’ve received a lot of feedback from folks who’ve requested more branches in the “Army Branch” series of shirts and who’ve requested other badges and tabs (mainly Air Assault and Ranger), so we’ll be working to add those in too.  
• Posters/Prints: we’ve offered the Operation Overlord map print for some time, but we never released the print version of the Pearl Harbor, Battle of the Bulge, or Battle of Iwo Jima battle maps before. We’re now in production on those this week, so within the next couple of months, those new maps will be available.
• Product Variation: we’ve wanted to offer a better variety of accessory products for some time, so we’re in the process of testing out some products and hope to add those soon. These include: battle map whiskey rocks glasses, CIVVIE-logo beer glasses and coffee mugs, CIVVIE-engraved flasks, CIVVIE flags, and a larger collection and assortment of hats.
• Ambassador/Affiliate Program (“The Alpha Team”): we first tested our ambassador program in 2019, but didn’t have the bandwidth to launch it at the time. That’s since changed, and just last week, we launched a collegiate edition of “The Alpha Team” at The Citadel, my alma mater. If you’d be interested in learning more about The Alpha Team, please let me know! 

Finally, we’re also looking to partner with a veteran-oriented non-profit — donating a portion of our yearly proceeds — so more to follow on that too.

As I close, thank you again for supporting CIVVIESUPPLY, and thank you for engaging with us via this page and the Google form. We’re on a mission to “honor the past to inspire the future,” and we couldn’t be more grateful to have you joining us.

FLAGS FORWARD. LEGENDS NEVER DIE.

Thomas McGuire

Co-Founder