🎤 Three Generations, One Brand: Eric Simsolo’s Path to President of Next Level Apparel
Eric Simsolo, President of Next Level Apparel, grew up watching his father and grandfather build a wholesale apparel empire from a single embroidery machine in Los Angeles. He chose to start as an intern anyway, worked through every corner of the business, and stepped into the president’s role during one of the company’s most demanding turnarounds. What he found wasn’t just a cleanup project — it was a masterclass in what it looks like to build something that outlasts you.
✨ Key Insights You’ll Learn:
Three generations of apparel entrepreneurship beginning in Israel in the late 1970s
How sublimation printing innovation unlocked photorealistic design at mass-market scale
Warehouse move as an MBA-caliber project management experience in summer 2014
Post-COVID inventory crisis and the eight-figure write-off that preceded the rebuild
Stop the bleeding — the four-stage turnaround framework borrowed from battlefield medicine
The dynamics of reporting directly to your father as president and CEO
Acquisition of Stedman Europe expanding Next Level from two to fourteen distributors
First-ever impact report measuring carbon footprint, cotton sourcing, and supply chain responsibility
US Cotton Trust Protocol and recycled polyester as tangible sustainability commitments
Altana AI platform for vetting vendor relationships and preventing supply chain blind spots
🌟 Eric’s Key Mentors:
His grandfather: engineering visionary who retooled industrial printing presses for sublimation, turning a ceiling into a floor for the next generation
His father: market-research-driven entrepreneur who identified every new business category before competitors saw it, and modeled the courage to start over twice
Next Level’s leadership team: COO, VP of HR, and department heads who carried institutional knowledge through multiple transitions
The Stedman Europe team: gave Eric his first model of what a properly staffed international subsidiary could look like
👉 Don’t miss this conversation about what it actually feels like to step into your father’s company during a crisis, why sustainability is a revenue strategy and not just a values statement, and what it means to build something designed to outgrow the person who built it.