Still catching your breath from the mountain hike with FORGED? Well, Navy SEALs and Marines don’t slow down so neither will we. On this second part of our interview with FORGED, CEO Mike Sauers and Marketing Manager Samantha Bonilla joined Digital Hospitality’s Shawn Walchef as they head to South Bay Rod and Gun Club for a shooting session preceded by a history lesson of the FORGED Brand full of business tips.
The power couple behind FORGED Brand finds themselves in the front seats for the latest Cali BBQ Media Podcast as we appropriately find out that FORGED was started out of the trunk of a car. Check out the first part of our day with Mike Sauers and Samantha Bonilla.
These days, FORGED Brand is making waves digitally as seen with social media campaigns starring Chris Pratt, John Krasinski, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and others. Some of these campaigns have raised more than a million dollars for veteran and first responder foundations and charities like The Murph Challenge.

However, the brand was not built overnight. Sparked by a devastating moment during a firefight in Iraq in 2006, Mike and his platoon’s desire to help a wounded SEAL inspired the quick creation of a t-shirt to fundraise for their teammate and close friend’s Elliott’s medical expenses.
“We wanted to help raise funds to aid with Elliott’s recovery. I had a little experience making shirts and hats for the platoon,” reflects Mike. “We made a shirt, we started selling them around the team and we ended up making a lot of money in a short period of time. We used the money to aid with his recovery and then a couple guys on the team started asking me to make more t-shirts.”
Taking on the ask, Mike recruited another SEAL buddy who was good at graphic design. They started making shirts for the team and selling them out of the trunk of a car. By that holiday season, it was clear they had a hit on their hands.
“I think I made more money doing [shirts] that month than I did in the NAVY!” Mike reflects on that pivotal December. Inspired by the success, the decision to move from SEAL work to a clothing company was on. “If I can’t get this thing going in two years I’ll come crying back!” Mike pledged.
This upstart clothing company’s name? FORGED, of course. Well, wrong. Originally named KNOX – a play on hard knocks – business was booming for Mike and his graphic designer. That was until they were hit with a C&D four months in. As it turned out, KNOX already existed. “We were able to sell our existing inventory, recoup our money back, and then we started searching for names.”
That search for a new name would not be easy. Ironically, it would be an old shirt from Mike’s SEAL days that would inspire many new shirts to come.
“One day I was looking through my closet and I came across my old Hell Week t-shirt. There was a saying on the shirt that said: The hardest steel is forged in the hottest fires.” 
Jackpot.
“I thought about that because ‘forged’ is a saying we used on the teams, like, Hey is that guy forged?” recalls Mike. “If something is forged it means that it’s formed with great concentration. If you looked up the definition of forged it says, ‘to form by heating and hammering, beat into shape.’ If that’s not the definition of someone going through SEAL training, then nothing is! I really resonated with that word. Forged is used over and over again in the SEAL Creed.