The Legend of Michigan State’s Bearded Man

MSU senior Braden Cleary is the co-founder of TheMountCo and creator of The Bearded Man Project, an initiative to bring attention to the waning popularity of America’s national parks.

What do you get when you com­bine a beard­ed man, a t‑shirt and your love of nature? You get The­Mount­Co, a cloth­ing com­pa­ny that was co-found­ed by child­hood friends Braden Cleary and Pre­ston Smith.

Grow­ing up, Cleary spent most of his time ski­ing or par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Boy Scouts, where he did his fair share of out­door activ­i­ties. His pas­sion for the out­doors is what sparked the idea for The­Mount­Co, a cloth­ing com­pa­ny ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing nature and the Nation­al Park Service.

The idea came to Cleary in high school after he and Smith decid­ed they want­ed to start a busi­ness togeth­er once they got into col­lege. Even though Cleary and Smith went to dif­fer­ent col­leges, Cleary going to Michi­gan State Uni­ver­si­ty and Smith going to Cap­i­tal Uni­ver­si­ty, they stuck to their goal and start­ed The­Mount­Co their fresh­man year of col­lege.  

Becom­ing a Brand

Once Cleary and Smith had the idea for the cloth­ing line, they need­ed a logo—something that would stand out, so peo­ple would rec­og­nize them.

First, they had the idea of a line of t‑shirts with sim­ple features—a man’s face, a thought bub­ble and the image of his favorite sport with­in the bub­ble. For exam­ple, one t‑shirt they designed depict­ed a man’s head with ski-relat­ed quotes, such as dif­fer­ent ski moun­tains, above it. So, Cleary and Smith hopped on the com­put­er to try and make this idea come alive, but when they start­ed to design it, they came up with The Beard­ed Man instead.

They start­ed small at first, most­ly sell­ing their prod­uct to their friends and fam­i­ly, but once their cloth­ing line picked up some steam, they added a web­site and beefed up their social media pres­ence. Soon enough, The Beard­ed Man could be spot­ted across the coun­try on their hats, t‑shirts, sweat­shirts and more.

The company’s most recent excit­ing ven­ture is becom­ing grass­roots part­ners with War­ren Miller Enter­tain­ment, the world’s biggest name in snow-sports cin­e­ma. Every year, War­ren Miller goes across the coun­try show­ing their lat­est films of dif­fer­ent snow-sports ath­letes doing what they love to do on ski moun­tains across the globe. The excite­ment the films gen­er­ate dri­ves adren­a­line-seek­ers in the audi­ence to actu­al­ly come and mar­vel at the beau­ti­ful, snow-filled land­scapes that act as the ath­letes’ play­ground. “I want­ed to come up with a col­lab­o­ra­tive project, thought of War­ren Miller films and was able to pro­mote at the biggest film­ing in Michi­gan,” Cleary says. By part­ner­ing with War­ren Miller Enter­tain­ment, Cleary was able to bring his cloth­ing line to the biggest show­ing in Michi­gan, in his col­lege town of East Lans­ing, and pro­mote it to fel­low ski bums.

Becom­ing a Co-Founder

So, how does the senior mar­ket­ing major keep up with his grow­ing busi­ness, school work and still be a part of the MSU Alpine Ski and Snow­board team? Cleary del­e­gates his time, some­thing he learned back in Boy Scouts. “That’s a key fac­tor for me to do all of it,” says the MSU senior.

And he doesn’t have any plan to stop soon. After grad­u­at­ing in the spring, Cleary plans to move to Trevor City, one of the biggest vaca­tion towns in the state, and open up shop there so he can focus on grow­ing the brand.