Overview of Practical Founders Podcast Episode #213: Lynn Burghardt
This episode features Lynn Burghardt, president and co-founder of Chipley, a vertical software platform built for the decorated apparel and team sports merchandising industry. Chipley grew out of the long-running family business Burghardt Sporting Goods in Milwaukee, where the founders experienced firsthand the pain of managing custom team orders, inventory, and web stores. Lynn shares how the company bootstrapped from an internal problem into a fast-growing software business, why they later accepted growth equity from Growth Street Partners for expertise rather than cash, and how they’re now expanding into a broader end-to-end business management platform.
What Chipley Does
Chipley is a specialized e-commerce and operations platform for businesses that sell customized goods such as:
- Team jerseys and apparel
- Promotional products
- Custom mugs, hats, and branded merchandise
- School, league, and corporate storefronts
Core value
Chipley helps dealers and decorators:
- Launch customer-specific web stores
- Collect orders online
- Manage sizing, names, and customization
- Automate inventory and work orders
- Simplify procurement and fulfillment
The goal is to make the process easy for the dealer and give end customers a modern, Amazon-like buying experience.
The Origin Story: Built From a Real Operational Pain Point
Chipley came out of the Burghardt family’s own business challenges.
Background on Burghardt Sporting Goods
- Founded in 1881
- Oldest family-owned sporting goods store in the U.S.
- Now in its 145th year
- Fifth-generation family business
- Roughly 80% of revenue comes from team sales and decorated apparel, not traditional retail
Why Chipley was created
The family needed a better way to handle increasingly complex custom orders. Before Chipley:
- Customers were ordering with paper forms and checks
- Sizes and names had to be collected manually
- The process was slow and cumbersome
- Existing industry software did not solve the problem well enough
Lynn and her brothers initially built a basic internal system to solve their own problem, then realized the entire industry needed it.
Bootstrapped Growth Before Outside Capital
The company started cautiously and pragmatically:
- Conceptualized around 2015
- Began selling in 2018
- Initially funded with $250,000 from Lynn’s father, Chip Burghardt
- Treated as a “risk capital” experiment rather than a classic venture-backed startup
Early mindset
The founders did not assume they were building a huge tech company. They expected either:
- the product would work and grow, or
- they’d learn from the attempt and move on
That modest, practical approach fit the company’s culture and helped them avoid overbuilding too early.
Why They Took Growth Equity
Chipley eventually partnered with Growth Street Partners after years of inbound interest from investors.
Why they chose to take funding
It was not primarily about needing cash. Instead, the reasons were:
- Access to strategic advice and expertise
- Help building the right leadership team
- Support formalizing roles, KPIs, and product direction
- Guidance on hiring strong sales and engineering leaders
- Relief from being spread too thin internally
What they wanted from a partner
Lynn emphasized that they wanted a partner who could:
- Respect their autonomy
- Provide board-level and operational insight
- Help them scale without taking over the business
She described Steve and Nate at Growth Street Partners as a “perfect fit.”
Business Model and Growth
Chipley started with a percentage-of-gross-merchandise-value (GMV) model.
Current pricing
- Around 3.5% of GMV
- Plus credit card processing-related fees
- Works well for their web store customers because Chipley only makes money when customers make money
Scale and traction
- About 50 employees
- Roughly 1,500 active companies
- Around $250 million GMV processed annually
- Approximately 35% year-over-year growth
Upcoming shift
Chipley is moving toward a hybrid model with Chipley One, which will:
- Combine more of the customer’s workflow into one platform
- Replace multiple tools with a single solution
- Move closer to a more traditional SaaS pricing model
Go-To-Market and Customer Success
Chipley grows through a mix of:
- Inbound demand
- Outbound sales
- Trade shows
- Regional events
- Customer expansion
- Account management and quarterly business reviews
Customer retention and expansion
Because revenue is transaction-based, customer success is about helping customers:
- Grow their own orders
- Use the platform more effectively
- Launch more storefronts
- Increase transaction volume over time
They segment customers into cohorts based on onboarding date and run QBRs to identify opportunities for growth.
Seasonality and Operational Realities
Chipley’s business is highly seasonal.
Busy times
- Back-to-school period, especially August
- Fall sports season
- Holiday preparation in November
Slower periods
- December, after buying is already done
- Parts of the summer
That means the business must manage cash flow carefully and plan around predictable swings in revenue. Lynn noted that their conservative financial approach, inherited from the family business, helps them handle these fluctuations.
AI and the New Product Direction
Chipley is taking AI seriously and using it to accelerate product development.
How AI is being used
- An AI consultant has joined the team
- Developers now have AI tools to reduce manual slog work
- The team is using AI to spend more time on strategy and product thinking
Lynn said they’re treating AI adoption as an urgent priority and want to stay ahead of the curve.
What’s Next
The long-term goal is to expand Chipley from a web store solution into a more complete end-to-end business platform for the decorated apparel and promotional products industry.
Future vision
- Continue building toward a unified operational system
- Help customers run more of their business in one place
- Stay in control of the company for now
- Potentially consider an eventual exit only after the mission is substantially complete
Lynn made it clear that the team is not looking to sell quickly—they want to finish what they started.
Lynn Burghardt’s Advice for Founders
Her main advice for other founders:
- Trust yourself more
- Don’t underestimate how much you already know about your problem
- Take smart risks sooner if you know the market well
- Don’t be afraid to try
Key takeaway
Her story shows that founders don’t always need to come from technology to build valuable software companies. Sometimes the deepest industry knowledge leads to the best product ideas.
Key Takeaways
- Vertical software wins when it solves a painful, specific industry workflow
- Real operational experience can be a major product advantage
- Growth equity can be valuable for expertise, not just capital
- Transaction-based models align incentives when customers grow
- Modern AI and better leadership structure can help mature a bootstrapped company scale faster