Cutting Edge Technology and Forming ESOPs in your Manufacturing Company With Jason Azevedo

<p><strong>Lisa Ryan:&nbsp;</strong>Hey, it's Lisa Ryan, and welcome to the Manufacturer's Network Podcast. I'm excited to introduce our guest today, Jason Azevedo. Jason has had the heart of business development since an early age, starting a very successful apparel company that grew from humble garage beginnings to annual gross billings of over a million dollars at age 15.</p><p>By age 18, Jason was doing millions in business with Starbucks, Nike, Disney, Marvel, Volkswagen, Audi, Lucas Films, Dodgers, and countless NBA teams. Jason, welcome to the show.</p><p><strong>Jason Azevedo:&nbsp;</strong>Awesome. Thanks for having me, Lisa.</p><p><strong>Lisa Ryan:&nbsp;</strong>So, I know you had an early start, so share a little about your background and what led you to do what you've done. </p><p><strong>Jason Azevedo:&nbsp;</strong>Yeah. I'll tell you a story about what it is. First, I've got to set the stage. It was February of 2007 when we started our first company. I'm 15, my brother's 20, and we came from a household where our father worked in a factory, where he worked the graveyard shift for 28 and 29 years for the same company. In the last six or seven years of working there, he got laid off about that many times because there were so many changes in ownership.</p><p>My brother and I were watching what the most profitable plant in the country for these companies was. That's why they're able to keep on selling the plant. But they had messed up the relationship between the management and the employees so badly that the plant was almost impossible to own. So we got to see it from the employee side and what that does to a family. There's a person's dynamic when there's all that turmoil going on within manufacturing. So we launched our first company at 15, believing we could do something special for the people. And really, it didn't have to be that toxic environment in a manufacturing plant.</p><p>We started with t-shirts of all things. And because it was February of 2007 when the market crashed, about a year lat