Revolutionizing Custom Logo Apparel With Fred Meyers of Queensboro

Fred Meyers is the Founder and President of Queensboro, a custom logo apparel business he started in 1982 while a student at Columbia University. Inspired by the popularity of Lacoste shirts and a desire to offer high-quality polos with personalized logos, he began his venture from his college dorm room. Over the past four decades, Fred has grown Queensboro into a multi-million-dollar enterprise, serving small businesses and major clients like Costco and Pepsi. Today, the company operates out of Wilmington, North Carolina, and Dallas, Texas, continuing its mission to help people share who they are with the world through custom apparel. ​

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [01:19] Fred Meyers discusses his admiration for marketing legends like Ron Popeil and Joe Sugarman
• [04:48] How Queensboro started from a college dorm room in 1982
• [06:37] Early marketing strategy using small space ads in The New Yorker and The Wall Street Journal
• [08:15] The importance of irresistible offers and risk reversal guarantees in Queensboro’s growth
• [11:28] How Fred discovered the power of logoed apparel for team identity and business branding
• [16:36] Why niche marketing is expensive and the decision to market broadly
• [19:09] Queensboro’s commitment to serving small businesses and entrepreneurs
• [21:58] Investing in real-time order tracking and improving the customer experience through custom technology
• [28:28] Expanding from polo shirts into shorts, umbrellas, and beyond
• [37:53] How Queensboro scaled operations while reducing warehouse space and inventory
• [45:01] Fred’s leadership philosophy based on trust, relationships, and building great teams

In this episode…

Growing a small business can feel overwhelming, especially when building trust with customers, standing out with a strong brand, and managing complex logistics as you scale. How do you offer irresistible products, build lasting relationships, and maintain operational control without getting buried under inefficiencies?

Fred Meyers, an expert in direct marketing and custom product development, shares how entrepreneurs can create a powerful customer experience through trust, transparency, and dynamic offers. He explains the critical importance of offering risk-free guarantees, using relatable marketing strategies, and investing in custom technology to track customer orders in real-time. Fred also highlights how building a strong internal culture focused on principled, proactive, positive, and productive employees drives business success over the long term.

In this episode of the Inspired Insider Podcast, Dr. Jeremy Weisz interviews Fred Meyers, Founder and President of Queensboro, about growing a multi-million dollar custom apparel business. Fred discusses building trust with customers, evolving the product line, and scaling operations without losing personal touch. He also shares direct marketing insights, early entrepreneurial challenges, and leadership lessons based on relationships and trust.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• Fred Meyers on LinkedIn
• Queensboro

Special Mention(s):

• Joe Sugarman on LinkedIn

Related episode(s):

• “[Top Agency Series] Navigating a Merger and Becoming an End-to-End Digital Partner With Kevin Hourigan of Spinutech” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Direct Response Series] “But wait, there’s more!” – with Infomercial King Ron Popeil Founder of Ronco.com” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Direct Response Series] From Maxwell Street to Infomercials with Ron Popeil” on the Inspired Insider Podcast
• “[Direct Response Series] Triggers, Toll-Free Triumphs, and Tales From a Marketing Legend With Joe Sugarman” on the Inspired Insider Podcast

Quotable Moments:

• “The thing about being young — you don’t know what you can’t do, so you just keep working.”
• “The power of ‘we’ is much greater than the power of ‘me’ when building a brand.”
• “You wake up in the morning and you just never know what’s going to happen in business.”
• “Relationships are the basis of trust, and trust is the foundation of everything we do here.”
• “We are dealing with the absolute best customer base in the world — small and medium businesses.”

Action Steps:

1. Create irresistible, low-risk offers for your customers: Offering no-brainer deals with strong guarantees reduces friction, builds immediate trust, and encourages long-term loyalty.
2. Invest in custom technology to enhance customer experience: Real-time order tracking keeps customers informed and increases satisfaction by making them feel in control.
3. Focus on building principled, positive, proactive, and productive teams: Hiring employees who align with core values strengthens company culture and drives consistent business growth.
4. Market broadly rather than focusing narrowly on niches: Broad marketing exposure lowers acquisition costs and diversifies your customer base for greater stability.
5. Prioritize relationship-building with customers, vendors, and employees: Strong relationships foster trust, smooth over challenges, and open doors for long-term collaboration and success.

Episode Transcript

Intro: 00:00

You are listening to Inspired Insider with your host, Dr. Jeremy Weisz.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:22

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here founder of inspiredinsider.com where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Fred Myers of Queensboro. You can check him out at Queensboro.com and Fred, before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out. Since we were before we hit record. You were saying I’m old school, right? So I was like, who’s some interesting interviews? Who are old school?

You know, I did a top agency digital agency series. I had Kevin Hourigan on. Kevin Hourigan actually started his agency in 1995. So it’s interesting to hear the landscape of not just business, but also agency life, but also the internet and how his business evolved over that period of time. Another old school, one that comes to mind is Ron Popeil. I don’t know if you remember Ron Popeil?

Fred Meyers: 01:19

The pocket peeler.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 01:20

Yeah, he was the infomercial king, right? And so when you hear about wait, there’s more. I’m pretty sure he came up with that saying. That was an amazing episode on his journey. I had Joe Sugarman on the podcast.

Joe Sugarman started Blue Blockers. Okay. And he was an amazing direct response marketer. He got famous with blue blockers because of the infomercials they were running. And so that was a great episode as well, but many more.

Check them out on inspiredinsider.com. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect to their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in two ways.

One, we help companies launch and run a podcast, so we’re an easy button for a company to do that. We do the strategy, accountability and the full-execution production. Also. Number two, we are an easy button for a company’s corporate gifting. And people will send to their clients or partners and also their staff.

And we like to send food, Fred because I like to get food. So we’re kind of like the magic elves that run in the background and make it easy for the company to build relationships and run their business. And for me, over the past decade, I found no better way to, you know, when I’m looking at building relationships and creating life changing, you know, friendships, to feature them on my podcast, share with the world what they’re working on, and also send them delicious gifts in the mail. So if you’ve thought about doing those things, go to rise25.com or email us at [email protected].

I am excited to introduce Fred Meyers. He’s the founder of Queensboro. Queensboro is a company he actually founded in 1982, and it revolutionized the custom logo apparel industry. This was before the existence of fax machines or 800 numbers, I think Joe Sugarman talked on the podcast at one point about creating 800 numbers, and how it was illegal at some point to take credit cards over the phone. I think at the time he did do it anyways and asked for forgiveness.

But Fred identified a market gap in the premium polo shirt space, which was dominated by Ralph Lauren and Lacoste, and he actually built a supply chain from scratch, transforming a college dorm room operation into a multi-million dollar company that’s really sustained growth over the past 45 years, and it’s grown to over 125 employees. They’ve served major clients like Costco, Burger King, and Pepsi. But really, the bread and butter is the small businesses, and they help build those small businesses brands through custom apparel. So Fred, thanks for joining me.

Fred Meyers: 04:19

Yeah, great to be here. And I got to say, Ron Popeil is a hero of mine. I haven’t seen, like, all of his work. How long ago did you — is he is he still.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 04:34

He actually, unfortunately passed away. I don’t know if it was a year ago or two years ago, but I’ll send you the interview. His story is incredible. You know what? Why was he a hero?

What? What? Did you see him?

Fred Meyers: 04:48

He’s a brilliant marketer. I mean, it was, you know, to create the excitement that he was able to create in these infomercials and these the crazy products, the fishing rods. And I mean, it’s like it’s brilliant. It’s just it’s art, you know, it’s like if you like B movies and there’s a lot of people that like B movies, you know, you see the art and, and the work that he, he did and you know, so there’s a, there’s a, a genre of it, you know, Billy Mays I think was another guy. Oh yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 05:27

The Shamwow I think Billy Mays is the shamwow.

Fred Meyers: 05:30

Right, right. And Sugarman also, you know, different a little bit of a different energy to him. But, you know, the. You’re younger than I am. You know, I grew up watching Crazy Eddie commercials on TV.

You know, our products are prices are insane. And, you know, these were the inspirations That kind of led me into marketing and got me into marketing and. There’s been a lot of other great ones. But you talked about you mentioned you’re from Chicago, which is really a lot of ways the. Yeah, but wait, there’s more.

The Chicago is really kind of the center of where direct marketing grew out of with Sears originally with the original catalog. And we started off really as we were taking small space ads in the back of New Yorker magazine. Yeah, yeah. And Wall Street Journal, New Yorker, New York Times and.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:34

Is that how you got your early customers? The Queens.

Fred Meyers: 06:37

Yeah, that was how I got my early customers.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:39

How did you even discover. Do space ads at the time?

Fred Meyers: 06:44

How did I discover?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:45

Yeah.

Fred Meyers: 06:46

Is that what your question?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:46

Yeah.

Fred Meyers: 06:47

Like so.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 06:47

Yeah. What were some of the things you did early on?

Fred Meyers: 06:50

So, you know, I kind of grew up with The New Yorker magazine in the house, and, you know, I would when it came, I’d look at the cartoons and then look at the ads because they always had like quirky, quirky kind of products, little like pretty little space ads and was just drawn to how you can tell a story in such a small, small amount of space.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 07:17

What was the offer at the time? And by the way, for people listening to the audio, there is a video. We’re looking at Queensboro and what I think of all these direct response marketers, Fred, because, you know, all of them are experts and, you know, really amazing at offers, right? And when I go to your website, like you have these kind of no-brainer offers on here, which is genius because it gets people going. So I’m curious what those original space ads.

So you can see here, try a custom knit beanie. It’s $5. Like what’s the risk. It’s $5 right. And we have hoodies.

Ten bucks. Like, there’s no way you can get a hoodie anywhere for $10, let alone your custom logo on it. And so this is I love the hooking me in. It’s like it’s like, listen, I might as well get one for our company, right? Because it’s ten bucks for a hoodie.

And obviously if we want more like, oh yeah, we have staff, we’ll buy more. And you know, so I love the offers on the page here.

Fred Meyers: 08:15

Yeah. And you know we’ve got this trust proposition two which is that in addition to this. And you know, I’m glad you told me about these other guys because. You know, I definitely consider myself working in their tradition that they started. But if we’ve got this guarantee that if you don’t like the product, even the $4.95 polo, you don’t even have to send it back to get a refund or replacement.

So we’re, we’re playing around with how hard to push that the risk reversal.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 08:59

Right. Yeah. Totally.

Fred Meyers: 09:00

Yeah. Because you know obviously the deal here is an arbitrage in a way because you can get free shirts if you really want to.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:10

But we’ll, we’ll talk about I mean, you even send stuff to Nigerian princes. So we’ll talk about that. But go back to what was in the original space ads that were selling that worked.

Fred Meyers: 09:26

Yeah. So you talked about revolution revolutionizing this space. And in order to be a revolution, there needs to be a prior regime. But there was not even a prior regime here. I guess you could say what Lacoste and Ralph Lauren were doing was the prior regime, but there was no industry of putting your logo on like polo shirts.

I mean, there’s a little bit of a t-shirt industry going and, you know, country clubs. Had a custom logo golf shirts there. But in terms of like normal people, normal. Businesses being able to get apparel with their logo on it, it just didn’t exist. So.

It was more like a birthing than a revolution. And the idea was, you know, I’d grown up. Wearing Lacoste shirts and they’re amazing shirts. They’re still amazing shirts. I haven’t worn 1 in 40 years, at least since I started the business.

But as the. As the brand started taking on this, like, status snobby Connotation. You know, I wasn’t really interested. I wasn’t — I didn’t relate to that. So I came up with the idea.

Wouldn’t it be great if you get the same quality shirt with any logo or design you wanted on it? And, you know, you talked a little bit in the intro about building out the supply chain. That was not an easy process at all. But, you know, the thing about being young, you don’t know what you can’t do. So, you know, you just keep working on it till you find the people that can help you.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 11:18

Do you remember your first customer that was meaningful to you like a milestone?

Fred Meyers: 11:28

So. I was in college in New York at the time, and I had a guy that I was working with on the business at the time, and we Met playing squash at school. And he was he was operations research major. And he was doing an internship one summer with one of the investment banks downtown. And turns out they had a squash league.

They had a summer squash league for not just interns, but associates and everything. And so we made some polo shirts with the name of the investment bank on these shirts. And. These guys trotted him out for a match. And the guys that were playing said, oh my God, like, those shirts are amazing.

How can we get them? And the guys at the investment bank that he was working at, they started seeing him and everybody at the investment bank wanted them. And this guy, my friend, I’ll tell you the name of it, was Morgan Stanley at the time. I might as well drop the name. I’m not even sure if there exists anymore, but.

So my the guy I was working with on this one day, he’s at his desk and his phone rings and he hears this, Jeff. And he says, yeah, this is Jeff. He says, come up to my office. And it was the CEO of Morgan Stanley, which I think his name was Fisher at the time or something. I wish I could remember the names.

And so he said right away, sir. And so he goes up to the 86th floor or wherever the guy was, and he says, what’s this I see about everybody walking, getting these shirts with the polo, the, the Morgan Stanley name on it. And he said, and Jeff, my friend said, yeah, it’s just I’m doing this with my friend. And we thought it’d be fun to do it for the. for the team and the guy said, the CEO says, what happens if somebody robs a bank with one of those shirts on and the picture on the front of the New York Post?

And my friend said, well, I probably wouldn’t be good publicity for the firm, would it? So we got banned from Morgan Stanley but all the other investment banks started signing up. And I kind of was the first like launch of how we saw how you take a shirt and you add a logo to it, and all of a sudden the one plus one is equal to a lot more than two. It’s like 3 or 4. And, you know, you saw it with Lacoste.

The enthusiasm and affection for these shirts was far greater than the sum of the parts. And that was the thing that I was trying to tap into. You know, that’s what I saw happening first with Lacoste and then with the squash league stuff. And you know, that’s magic. You know, that’s magic.

And the original idea was that I thought individuals, you and me and, you know, we’d come up with our own little, you know, Fred logos and Jeremy logos or whatever with the panda or something. But it turns out that, you know, the businesses were the ones that already had the logos. And the thing that I kind of missed also about the idea is, and, you know, this is, you know, you can kind of it’s not unexpected for a 2020 year old kid who’s totally wrapped up in his, in his own head and his own life, but that the lesson was the power of we is much greater than the power of me. So like, if you and I are on a business together and we can both wear a shirt, that or we’re on a team together and we can share that experience as opposed to it’s just about me and how great I am with my logo. That’s a much stronger selling proposition.

That’s something that resonates a lot more with more people than individual logos.

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