For more than a decade now, we’ve been talking about the changes brought about by e-commerce and how fewer and fewer of us are venturing out to malls and shops and opting instead of the convenience of e-retail platforms.

As this brave new world of online shopping continues to evolve, we’re seeing an ever-growing and fascinating landscape of entrepreneurs who are using pieces and parts of the new technology, mixing the old with the new, the virtual with the real, and coming up with new iterations of retail.

Nathan Pearce founder and designer at Pearce Bespoke makes tailor-made mens’ suits and delivers

Nathan Pearce is CEO of Pearce Bespoke, a Baton Rouge clothier that is making custom tailoring more accessible, affordable, and easy, by using some of the digital  tools that have made e-commerce so popular to create old-fashion, handmade garments.

Pearce Bespoke offers tailor-made suits and separates through a mobile shop. They come to you, get your measurements, and whip up a designer piece of clothing for you in just a few weeks.

Nathan has been in the clothing business for much of his career. He launched a custom T-shirt making business while fresh out of college and founded Pearce Bespoke in 2021, which now has brick and mortar locations in Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Lafayette. He is also franchising the brand and has more than 50 locations across the south.

If you listen to radio shows and podcasts about business, you’ve probably heard entrepreneurs talk about the success of their business, describing almost gleefully how they initially failed before they made it.

Well, failure isn’t always as much fun as these success stories make it sound. Not every failure is followed by success. Sometimes it’s followed by a career change.

Conrad Freeman heads up the Fabrication Lab at LSU’s College of Art & Design and is a fine- woodwork entrepreneur

Take, for example, Conrad Freeman. Today Conrad runs the fabrication lab in the LSU College of Art and Design. It’s a lab where faculty and students can design and build stuff using a variety of materials.

Before that, in 2016, Conrad founded Freeman Handcrafted, which made contemporary furniture by hand for commercial and residential customers. While Conrad’s furniture was beautiful, the market for his high-end products was very small in Baton Rouge and running the business was challenging, which is why after 6 years he stepped away from his own company for the position at LSU.

Conrad Freeman, Stephanie Riegel, Nathan Pearce, Out to Lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard

Out to Lunch is recorded live over lunch at Mansurs on the Boulevard. Photos by Brian Pavlich.