Broken in and built to last

When you buy a pair of raw denim jeans, they get better the more you wear them. They mold to your body, fade in the places you move the most, and start to carry the marks of wherever life takes you.

“There are so few things in our lives that we buy that get better with time,” Johan Lam says. “Almost every product that we buy gets worse with time. The car that you purchase gets scratched; it loses value as soon as you drive off the lot. The new phone that you buy gets slower with time [and] cracks when you drop it.”

It’s been more than two decades since Johan co-founded menswear brand 3sixteen, and the business has been shaped by time in its own way. Getting there took mistakes, tough decisions, and a lot of work that only made sense in hindsight.

Starting with a base layer

3sixteen didn't start with denim; it started with graphic T-shirts. "That's what you make when you have no idea how to make clothing," Johan says. He and his business partner wanted the designs to feel interesting and true to who they were, while also conveying a positive message for young people. 

From there, they learned as they went, leaning on factories, production managers, and people who understood how a garment actually comes together. Johan thinks a lot of business owners would recognize that feeling of figuring things out as they go. Even people with experience in a particular field may not be prepared for all the decisions that come with running a company. Most of the time, he says, “you’re just trying to solve the problem that’s directly in front of your face.”

As the clothing became more expensive and less graphic-driven, 3sixteen started to outgrow the streetwear shops that had carried its T-shirts. The brand moved into what was then called contemporary menswear, and for a while, the brand offered a little bit of everything. Ties and shirts made in New York, footwear made in Maine, and jeans made in San Francisco, using denim woven for them in Japan. 

It was the jeans that took off.

Going all in on denim

About a year or two into producing jeans, Johan and his business partner couldn’t keep them in stock. So they made the call to narrow the brand’s focus and go all in on denim.

"That was one of the best decisions we ever made as a brand," he says. It put the company in a healthier place and gave the partners space to breathe. Instead of splitting their time, money, and energy across every kind of product they could make, they put more resources behind what customers were already responding to.

There was some freedom in the timing, too. Johan was just starting college, and his business partner had recently graduated and was working full-time. They weren’t relying on 3sixteen to pay the bills or support a family. Looking back, Johan thinks that gave the business room to grow more naturally, before every risk carried the weight it might have now. “We operated out of the arrogance of being a 20-something without a care in the world,” he says.

They were the org chart

For years, nearly every part of the business ran through Johan and his partner. Johan warehoused products and shipped orders out of his house. He and his partner handled sales, flew to trade shows, met with retailers around the world, packed boxes, checked quality, and ran marketing, photography, and writing. If something needed to happen, they were usually the ones doing it.

Maintaining that kind of pace came with a cost, though. "The danger is that your head is down too much," he says. "You look up, and it's been three years, and you haven't really paid attention to where the business was going." 

Those early years were tiring, he says. There was a weariness that came from doing so much for so long. But every small win helped keep him moving forward, whether it was a new retailer or a stranger on the street wearing something he made. Eventually, Johan says, a lot of businesses reach a turning point. The same hands-on approach that gets an owner-operated company off the ground can eventually leave its founders with too little time and mental space to think about where it should go next.

Letting go without losing the thread

Slowly, he and his partner learned to let go of tasks, one at a time, and bring in other people to help. Today, 3sixteen has 15 full-time employees, plus a rotating group of contractors for photography, video, and web design. They also have an online store, flagship stores in New York and Los Angeles, and a wholesale network of boutiques around the world.

"It is really freeing," Johan says, "to have a team that you trust." For years, he had to be there every day for the business to keep moving. Now, with people who know the company and the brand, he has time for his family and more room to think about where 3sixteen is headed.

That shift has changed his role, too. As the team has grown, Johan has had to think more about how people work together, how they communicate, and how to create a place where criticism or direction doesn’t feel personal. When the team is working well, he says, it feels like a group that’s all rowing in the same direction.

Even now, he and his partner can still become the bottleneck. Some decisions move slower than they’d like because there isn’t always time to sit down, weigh every angle, and say yes or no. But the business no longer depends on them being involved in every task, every day. That’s what gives them the space to lead differently.

The difference between revenue and reality

Before 3sixteen had a finance team, Johan says the business ran mostly on instinct. If they sold out of jeans, they made more. If they sold out of something else, they made more of that, too. It worked for a long time, but sales alone couldn’t tell them whether the company was actually healthy.

"Our finance team is like turning the headlights on," he says. "For a long time, we were kind of driving in the dark." Now the finance team meets with them every week and works out of QuickBooks, where every transaction is categorized. If something comes through that the team isn't sure about, they ask, so everyone has a clearer read on the money coming in and going out.

That’s no small thing in an industry where the money can swing dramatically. "In the clothing business, the cash flows are enough to make you vomit," he says. "They're crazy." A brand can sell every piece of a product and still not be in a healthy place financially. Other expenses, including upcoming production bills, can complicate the picture even when sales look strong.

The data gives Johan and his team a better sense of whether the strong sales are reflected in the actual health of the company. It also helps them understand which production schedules and product levels the business can support as it continues to grow.

From the next drop to the next generation

That visibility has changed how 3sixteen makes decisions. With its finance team working in QuickBooks, the company has a clearer view of the business and more room to protect what matters most: the product. In an industry where trends come and go quickly, Johan believes 3sixteen’s future comes down to making really good clothing—and continuing to improve it.

That work usually starts with the fabric. Johan still meets with fabric dealers, looks through swatches, and thinks about what each material could become. From there, it’s the construction, the factory, the pattern, the fit, and all the small choices that make a garment work.

"When people buy jeans from us, they fully intend to wear them for 10-plus years," he says. That makes every decision carry more weight. 3sixteen customers care about the details, the history, the raw materials, and where and how something was made. Johan knows each pair of jeans will be with someone for a long time, through travel, work, family, and whatever else happens along the way.

He wants customers to come back years later and show the team what those jeans have become. That’s the kind of longevity Johan has been building toward. Twenty-two years after starting 3sixteen, he and his business partner are wondering whether the company could someday be something they pass down to their kids. They’re getting closer, he says, to becoming the kind of heritage brand they once admired—one that, like the jeans at the heart of the business, has gotten better with time.