It’s hard to imagine anyone holding a prejudice—conscious or otherwise—against New Frontier Brand founders and owners Jared and Joshua Ravenscraft because of their smooth Eastern Kentucky accents.
“We’d be at a tradeshow in Denver, and people would hear us talk and go, ‘Now, where are you from again?’ It’s something that they haven’t seen before, a brand coming out of Eastern Kentucky,” recalled Jared of their early days starting the brand that’s designed with Appalachian values at the forefront.
The soft-spoken brothers from Morehead take every opportunity—whether it’s mingling with executives from household outdoors brands such as Patagonia or The North Face, or sharing with friends that they’re committed to keeping their operations in Kentucky—to surprise people with their burgeoning brand that’s designed for function and style with a dedication to durability and sustainability.
Taking on the bigger brands was a tall ordeal for the humble duo and motivated them to push harder. When New Frontier officially was born in 2016, Josh was still in high school “selling hats and stickers out of my backpack,” and older brother Jared was finishing college at Morehead State University, where he played basketball. They worked as janitors on the side to help pay the bills while starting the business.
“We love the Appalachian region, and several years ago, there were no brands making things and representing this region through apparel,” Jared said. “We wanted to give it a shot. We just started out with the graphics and illustrations. We hustled to start.
“We didn’t have a website, but we wanted to build a brand that represented our vision of Appalachia. We wanted to make similar kinds of apparel that the big brands were making and do it through the Appalachian lens. Those brands speak for their community and clientele, and we wanted to represent home.”
They fully understood that for them, what was home came with different connotations to outsiders.
“People only know what they’ve seen on 60 Minutes—coal country, drug epidemic. So it’s always been important for us to change those stereotypes,” Jared said. “We love this area. The people are our neighbors. And there’s that underdog stigma, like you know you’re going to live out of trailers and ride four-wheelers. We do those things.
“But we weren’t being spoken for on a creative level. We wanted to say something, and we feel like we had something to say. And we’re still trying our best to say that today. We wanted to create products through our lens, and it’s important to represent our community.”
The brothers see their community as one of people who know the value of hard work.
“When I think of Appalachian people, I think of a Swiss Army knife,” Jared said. “They’re so resourceful. We lean into that. It’s what drives us.”
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Jared and Josh’s drive was passed down through their family. Their mom is a local schoolteacher, and their dad has worked for the government most of his life, specifically in Eastern Kentucky, helping folks be heard. The brothers credit their parents for teaching them how to care about the community. Their grandfather was a local business owner.
“Our dad’s dad, Bud Ravenscraft, left the Navy after World War II and opened the florist shop with my grandma that’s been here ever since,” Josh said. “They’ve passed, but the shop is still here. So, we grew up around the shop, and that’s a small business, person to person. We spent thousands of hours in that shop. That 100 percent had an effect on us.”
Even though they run a business that ships to all 50 states and a thriving online- and social media-driven operation, having a local shop in Morehead always will be a priority for them because of their grandfather.
The New Frontier brand is found at retailers such as Mast General Stores, which are located throughout North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The company works in a product partnership with country star Chris Stapleton and the Outlaw State of Kind charitable fund that Stapleton established with his wife, Morgane. Proceeds from the sale of New Frontier T-shirts assisted people affected by Eastern Kentucky flooding.
The brothers noted that one of their biggest accomplishments has simply been staying true to the brand and the region.
“We have so many friends and people growing up who move to take jobs here and there, and we understand. We felt that same pressure,” Jared said. “People think you’ve got to move to Nashville or you’ve got to move to Austin to be creative. But I think there’s something to be said for the people here in our state who are creative and doing that kind of work, designing whatever it may be. We appreciate them.
“There’s a cool culture here in our state, and we’re all just building on that with the work we do. So, we’re proud to be part of that community, and we know those pressures that those kids and people face in school—that they’ve got to go somewhere else to do something. It’s cool to be here and be building slowly.”
Josh finds it fulfilling to be a pair of farm boys who are running their successful business just up the road from where they grew up because “Kentucky’s so important to us.”
It’s important for them to represent their state well through creating high-quality products that people want to wear, whether it’s all-purpose tech shorts or waffle hoodies.
“I’ll visualize a bunch of ideas and then filter it through Josh,” said Jared, noting that they sometimes run ideas by their younger brother, Jaxon White, too. “I’ll take Josh 10 ideas, and he’ll pick three of them. With everything we do, there’s about a thousand decisions that go into one item.”
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New Frontier clothing may best be described as “mountain leisure” apparel. The brothers aim to create pieces that are functional, timeless and stylish.
“We don’t like to make junk,” Jared said. “They’re essential items someone would need each season. They’re made for movement; they’re inspired by where we’re from. Our warehouse is on the log yard, and we can see loggers come in every day, and we’re like, ‘What are those guys wearing? What are our people wearing?’ So, we make stretch flannels, functional flannels that those guys can work in and sweat in, but also that they want to wear out. They also want modern style. It’s durable but also looks good.”
Their other wow factor, Josh said, was the aim for sustainability when they launched their line of jeans. “Recycled jeans coming from a brand that’s headquartered and based in a rural town in Eastern Kentucky is literally unheard of, and it’s some of the most sustainable denim in the United States,” Josh said.
He explained that New Frontier’s denim is manufactured at one of the cleanest factories in Europe. In production, the company uses 94 percent less water and 75 percent less electricity than the industry production standard. The cloth is made from recycled denim fibers with no chemical dyes.
“Fashion is a dirty industry, and several years ago, we had another inflection point,” Jared added. “We can either keep being a part of the problem or we can clean up our operations and do things the right way, which is a part of where we’re from—it’s full of people who do things the right way and have some quality about them.
“We shifted and launched this denim campaign with some of the cleanest jeans in the world. We would love to make them here in America someday. That’s the goal. It’s part of the bigger mission we are on. We would like to move all our products into that realm and do things the right way.”
New Frontier releases new products more slowly than most brands. The brothers said they are interested only in making products that customers actually need.
www.newfrontierbrand.com