Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the bob lef Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Terrence Riley, the marketer extraordinary, the
Speaker 1: man behind the Stanley Quencher, the revival of Crocs and
Speaker 1: now Hey Dude shoots.
Speaker 2: Terrence, how do you reach the public today?
Speaker 3: I'll throw so many ways. The best way to reach
Speaker 3: them is fast. That's really the trick. And through social media,
Speaker 3: the opportunities to reach people fast are so incredible and extraordinary,
Speaker 3: so social and fast. That's been some of the unlocks
Speaker 3: in the last ten years for certainly my career.
Speaker 2: You say fast, what do you mean there?
Speaker 3: Fast today tomorrow? You know, the attention span of most
Speaker 3: folks is now, and so to get folks attention, you
Speaker 3: got to react quickly to what's happening on trends. A
Speaker 3: lot of the things that you write about, it's on TikTok,
Speaker 3: it's on social media, and brands in particular can see that.
Speaker 3: And the quicker you respond, react or create something, the
Speaker 3: better off your connection to that consumer or culture is
Speaker 3: what a gift it is too.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go with your present gig. Hey dude, you know,
Speaker 2: Hey Dude's numbers were great. Crocs purchased it recently, they
Speaker 2: haven't been that good. You're obviously given the job to
Speaker 2: bring it back. How are you going to do that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, hey dude, boy, we're a eight hundred plus
Speaker 3: million dollar footwear brand. You know, we're a top ten
Speaker 3: global footwear brand. So it's an amazing success story. But
Speaker 3: you're right, there's been a bit of a lull, which
Speaker 3: is one of the reasons why I accepted the offer
Speaker 3: to come as the Hay Dude president. And let's connect
Speaker 3: with consumers, customers and culture and so a couple things
Speaker 3: that I laid out really on my first day. You know,
Speaker 3: you join the team and you listen to some of
Speaker 3: the things that are working or isn't, and then you
Speaker 3: lay out a vision for the brand, and it's to
Speaker 3: really build the core and add more is where it starts.
Speaker 3: Like we had the Wendy and the Wally, these two
Speaker 3: famous silhouettes, which most people know is hey dude. So
Speaker 3: we've got to strengthen those things and you know forever,
Speaker 3: you know, since the Beatles at least are Elvis. You know,
Speaker 3: youth culture drives culture, but more than ever, youth female
Speaker 3: culture drives culture. And so to ignite a young female
Speaker 3: consumer is really an important aspect of what we're up
Speaker 3: to here at Hey dude in the nine months since
Speaker 3: I've been president, and do it through a few lenses,
Speaker 3: you know, where people are wearing shoes, travel and music
Speaker 3: and pre and post sport, especially young women who are
Speaker 3: wearing footwear in that kind of environment, to do all
Speaker 3: those things to ignore this brand, and we're already up
Speaker 3: to it. And it's been an incredible nine months for
Speaker 3: me in the way we're already connecting. So it's been
Speaker 3: a lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Okay, prior to getting an email from you, I didn't
Speaker 2: know what hay Dude was. I didn't know they were shoes.
Speaker 2: Am I an anomaly? Is there an issue of knowledge?
Speaker 2: Or is there an issue of I'm not the target
Speaker 2: audience and therefore that's not where you're focusing.
Speaker 3: Yes, I think it's a little bit of all of that.
Speaker 3: I think we're a relatively new brand and so that's
Speaker 3: part of it. But you know, eight hundred plus million
Speaker 3: dollar mystery is a pretty exciting opportunity for somebody like
Speaker 3: myself to you know, get the keys thrown at me
Speaker 3: to drive this car. So it's a pretty extraordinary thing,
Speaker 3: you know, but we're a footwear brand for all ages.
Speaker 3: There's you know, dad's in Iowa that love us, and
Speaker 3: young women in Miami who love us, and everywhere in between.
Speaker 3: And so the more we can get younger and more female,
Speaker 3: as I said earlier, the more well known Hey Dude
Speaker 3: will be. But you know, we're in some of America's
Speaker 3: premier retailers and we are a real success story that
Speaker 3: hit a bump in the road and now we're driving
Speaker 3: it like we stole it bub.
Speaker 2: Okay, not everybody is familiar with Hey Dude. Can you
Speaker 2: tell us what the Hay Dude shoe is?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So it's a really comfortable, casual shoe. It's like
Speaker 3: six ounces. It's the lightest thing. When you put your
Speaker 3: feet in, then you're like, oh dude, Like these are
Speaker 3: the lightest, most comfortable shoes out there, and they're meant
Speaker 3: for anything. Really, they're not performance shoes, of course, they're
Speaker 3: really casual and they're led by the Wendy and Wally
Speaker 3: silhouette that is really our icon. But Hey Dude is
Speaker 3: it's unlike anything, Bob. It's a real success story that
Speaker 3: I said is a huge top ten footwear brand that
Speaker 3: still is a bit of an unknown and that's an
Speaker 3: incredible thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's start really at the basics. Sure, what is
Speaker 2: the dude shoe made on?
Speaker 3: I was made out of different things? Certainly canvas is
Speaker 3: the thing that makes us famous, and it was so
Speaker 3: light and is a credible thing to pack in a suitcase,
Speaker 3: to add that extra pair in your bag so you
Speaker 3: don't hit the dreaded you know, weight limit in your
Speaker 3: your travel bag. So stylish, comfortable, and a variety of
Speaker 3: things that we make different styles, And there's boots, there's
Speaker 3: our classic Wendy's in our wallis, there's slippers that are
Speaker 3: made out of fuzz and all those good things. So
Speaker 3: a variety of different styles to suit alls of different needs.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the quantity of product. In the late nineties,
Speaker 2: when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he quite famously
Speaker 2: streamlined the product line to make it more comprehensible. How
Speaker 2: many different off rings does hey dudes have? And how
Speaker 2: do you decide whether to add something not add something?
Speaker 3: Yeah, great question. I think, as I mentioned earlier, it's
Speaker 3: to build the core and add more. And so the
Speaker 3: core is the Wendy and the Wally, the classic silhouette
Speaker 3: that people who do know, Hey dude, know it for
Speaker 3: and so we need to strengthen that icon, but build
Speaker 3: around it things like the slipper that I mentioned. A
Speaker 3: success that is beginning to percolate for us is an
Speaker 3: Austin Lift, which is a women's style that's a slip
Speaker 3: in elevated platform shoot different than the Wendy in the Wallly.
Speaker 3: So you want to strengthen the core, which is hey dude,
Speaker 3: but you want to add the more and connect with
Speaker 3: different consumers. So a similar strategy and underperforming skews we
Speaker 3: stop making.
Speaker 2: Okay distribution, people think content is king. If you can't
Speaker 2: buy it, it doesn't matter what it is. So you know,
Speaker 2: Nike famously pulled back and their sales went down. They
Speaker 2: wanted to go to a more direct sales model in
Speaker 2: this particular case, how many retailers can Hey dude, and
Speaker 2: do you want more? Do you want less? What is
Speaker 2: your relationship with the retail cham great question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we're in some of America's and the world's leading
Speaker 3: footwear destinations, you know, Dick's Sporting Goods here in the States,
Speaker 3: or famous Footwear Academy, and so we want to be
Speaker 3: on shelf. You know, footwear is often a TecTile thing.
Speaker 3: You want to pick it up and you want to
Speaker 3: try it on. But also, heydo dot Com, Amazon, or
Speaker 3: places where folks are shopping, And we were the number
Speaker 3: three TikTok shop brand in December of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: and so we want to be where the consumer is shopping,
Speaker 3: and that's what we're up to. So we're one of
Speaker 3: the top five footwear brands and so many of the
Speaker 3: key footwear destinations in the US and get an after it.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's drill down on some of the things you
Speaker 2: said physical retail. Yeah, how hard is it to get
Speaker 2: in a store? How many models will they take? How
Speaker 2: do you make sure that they're promoting your shoe appropriately?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, you're only as good as what the consumer
Speaker 3: is reacting to, right, So the partners at any footwear
Speaker 3: destination or any retailer are reacting to what their consumers
Speaker 3: are after. So certainly, as I mentioned earlier that Wendy
Speaker 3: and the Wally silhouette is eighty percent of Hey Dude,
Speaker 3: So introducing new styles and new colors, materials and finish
Speaker 3: for those to have somebody buy that extra pair or
Speaker 3: the one or two that they buy every season is
Speaker 3: part of the dance that you do with retailers, and
Speaker 3: so they tell you what's working and they buy or
Speaker 3: don't buy, depending on the success or the EBB and
Speaker 3: flow of what you're doing is the brand to market
Speaker 3: those different styles and so a variety of products in
Speaker 3: a variety of different settings around the world.
Speaker 2: And how do you determine pricing?
Speaker 3: Well, certainly the consumer helps us do that, but we're
Speaker 3: really an affordable you know, under seventy five dollars, largely
Speaker 3: a pair of comfortable shoes that you know, just last
Speaker 3: you for a long time and serve a variety of
Speaker 3: needs in so many different places. As I mentioned earlier,
Speaker 3: travel or pre and post sport, after the beach or
Speaker 3: at the barbecue. We're just walking around. I mean, hey,
Speaker 3: dudes are so popular as I mentioned earlier, by our
Speaker 3: success and now we're just hooking the brand up to
Speaker 3: the rejuvenation machine.
Speaker 2: Okay, what percentage of sales or physical retail as opposed
Speaker 2: to online.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's something we keep to ourselves, Bob, It's something
Speaker 3: that we don't typically share those kinds of things. But
Speaker 3: our online business is growing, as I mentioned earlier, TikTok
Speaker 3: shop and other things are new ways that we are
Speaker 3: showcasing hey Dude to consumers.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's just assume I wanted to buy online. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I can buy direct from heydude dot com or something
Speaker 2: I can buy TikTok, I can buy Amazon. Can I
Speaker 2: buy the issues?
Speaker 3: All the above? You can all the above haydud dot com,
Speaker 3: TikTok shop, or Amazon, or you walk into some of
Speaker 3: your favorite retailers wherever you are and they'll likely have
Speaker 3: Heydude depending on where you are and what store you
Speaker 3: walk into.
Speaker 2: Okay, what is the deal? Tell us more about the
Speaker 2: TikTok shop and how that works. Yeah, so lots of
Speaker 2: different content creators are talking about your brand on TikTok
Speaker 2: shop and they get a certain percentage of the business.
Speaker 2: It comes and goes depending on the content creator and
Speaker 2: the size of their audience. And it's a way to
Speaker 2: get your brand, your footwear right in front of folks
Speaker 2: on their for you page or wherever they're scrolling. And
Speaker 2: it's been a remarkable success for the brand.
Speaker 3: I joined as the Haydude president in May, and I've
Speaker 3: seen my success in other places on TikTok and social media,
Speaker 3: and that's one of the things I suggested to the
Speaker 3: team strongly that we really get active on TikTok and
Speaker 3: in TikTok shop, and we got after it thanks to
Speaker 3: a great team, and we've seen really strong success.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's say I'm a user. Yeah, theoretically, can I
Speaker 2: say I'm going to peruse the TikTok shop or pretty
Speaker 2: much am I buying because I see the video of it?
Speaker 3: Influencer both you can go to the TikTok shop or
Speaker 3: it will come through your algorithm as the algorithm works,
Speaker 3: and so you'll be interrupted by TikTok shop for whatever
Speaker 3: brand in our case, hey dude, or you can go
Speaker 3: to the hey Dude TikTok shop as you are on TikTok.
Speaker 3: And if you're not on TikTok, you go to other
Speaker 3: places to discover hey dude, whether we're on Instagram or
Speaker 3: other places like Facebook or just generally searching through Amazon,
Speaker 3: Google or hated.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's start with TikTok to reach the customer.
Speaker 2: How do you do that? Is it mostly about deals
Speaker 2: with influencers, Is it about posting your own content? Is
Speaker 2: it about buying ads? How do you do it? Yeah?
Speaker 3: All the above all the above, we have our own
Speaker 3: Hey Dude created content by our wonderful social media team.
Speaker 3: We work with content creators to create content. We work
Speaker 3: with celebrities or artists to create content, and of course
Speaker 3: TikTok shop content creators as well. So it is a
Speaker 3: real multi pronged delivery system just through TikTok alone that
Speaker 3: you want to keep fresh and get multiple messages out
Speaker 3: to the consumer. The messages that you want the consumer
Speaker 3: to know are important to Heydo, therefore they should know it. Okay,
Speaker 3: leaving celebrities aside, what works? I mean there are different theories.
Speaker 3: Let's talk print, which is dying. Some people say if
Speaker 3: you give a lot of information, the active buyer will
Speaker 3: actually be interested in that revent. Other people want less
Speaker 3: content or is it more about flashy video what sparks
Speaker 3: people on TikTok to be activated to purchase or check
Speaker 3: out Hey Do. I think humor can work oftentimes, but
Speaker 3: I think it's genuine content. Like genuine genuineness is what
Speaker 3: people are after and what connects the most. And as
Speaker 3: I said earlier, doing something and reacting to something fast
Speaker 3: can be that. And then of course, when brands participate
Speaker 3: in trends, you know, as you know, there's a different
Speaker 3: TikTok trend every week or so, and when the brand
Speaker 3: participates in it and does it well. Not all brands
Speaker 3: do it all the time, well including hey dude, but
Speaker 3: when you do it gets engagement gets shared, and that's
Speaker 3: part of the trick as well. So it's really an
Speaker 3: asset allocation of different things, not just on TikTok, but generally.
Speaker 2: Can you give me some specific example where there's a
Speaker 2: trend on TikTok and hey dude, leverage that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just uh, last week we did something that had
Speaker 3: four million views, which you know evades me of why,
Speaker 3: but it was two of our young social media associates
Speaker 3: just have their finger on that pulse and they engaged
Speaker 3: in it and away we went with, you know, four
Speaker 3: million views of something like that. That would seem innocuous
Speaker 3: and it's not something that you can script or would
Speaker 3: put in your marketing calendar, but it is something that
Speaker 3: is in real time and it was done well, and
Speaker 3: the consumer and the TikTok viewer if you will, or
Speaker 3: user reacted to it. You know, brands are doing that
Speaker 3: right now, including hey, do the you know the du
Speaker 3: lingo logo that their sunsetting. You know, brands are participating
Speaker 3: in that, including hey do just today. So there's different
Speaker 3: ways that you can engage.
Speaker 2: Well, way be very specific how you were participating in that.
Speaker 3: We just uh we posted about the the quote unquote
Speaker 3: death of the Duolingo logo, and so lots of brands
Speaker 3: are doing it and we've got nice little traction on
Speaker 3: it and different ways. Just to be part of the
Speaker 3: conversation is you know, I think others have said it's
Speaker 3: the marketplace, it's the town square. And so when you
Speaker 3: engage and you do it well, and not all brands
Speaker 3: get it right every time, but when you do do
Speaker 3: it well, it connects. And the more you're throwing different
Speaker 3: lines into the water to appeal to different audiences and
Speaker 3: put your brand out there as a current, fast moving
Speaker 3: finger on the pulse of culture brand, the more you
Speaker 3: connect and the more people say, I might give those
Speaker 3: shoes a try.
Speaker 2: Okay, when it comes to influencers, how many influencers might
Speaker 2: you have relationships within pay at a time?
Speaker 3: Dozens and dozens, and they ebb and flow depending on
Speaker 3: the season, depending on the shoe, depending on the message
Speaker 3: that we want to tell. So there are dozens and
Speaker 3: dozens of them, and some are with us throughout seasons.
Speaker 3: But it's a very cyclical of the moment type of
Speaker 3: environment where brands like us are fast moving and folks
Speaker 3: come and go. They're always in our stable, so to speak.
Speaker 3: But it depends on the message, time of year, gender perhaps,
Speaker 3: or the story that we're looking to tell. But we
Speaker 3: continue to want to build relationships with more influencers so
Speaker 3: that they're all part of a larger Hay Dude community.
Speaker 2: And how do you establish that relationship through an intermediary?
Speaker 2: How do you find these influencers.
Speaker 3: All the above, intermediaries, agencies, personal connections, prior experience, genuine
Speaker 3: fans of the brand, which is again back to authenticity.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of Hay Dude fans out there. There's
Speaker 3: a lot of fans who want to work with Haydude
Speaker 3: and get paid to share their love for Hey Dude.
Speaker 3: And so that's part of it for any brand. So
Speaker 3: it's a real mosaic of different content creators or influencers.
Speaker 3: Some work better than others, and some are of the
Speaker 3: moment and some are more evergreen.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's assume you have this relationship, you're going
Speaker 2: to pay the influencer. How much direction? How much in
Speaker 2: terms of requirements does hey dude have?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it varies. Also, there's a brief, and you know,
Speaker 3: we want to give content creators the latitude to create.
Speaker 3: Otherwise it's just dictation and that shows. So the content
Speaker 3: creator doesn't want to be dictated to. But there'll be
Speaker 3: brand standards of course, and things that we would not
Speaker 3: want people to say. But we review it and if
Speaker 3: there's something that was just off the mark, we'll ask,
Speaker 3: you know, the content creator to redo it. And that
Speaker 3: happens occasionally, but not too often because the briefs are
Speaker 3: usually tight and we have relationships with people that we
Speaker 3: trust and have vetted and have followers in various numbers,
Speaker 3: some huge uge and some micro and you know we
Speaker 3: ebb and flow with that as well.
Speaker 2: Okay, you talked about humor. What might a brief be?
Speaker 2: Give me an example of a brief in something somebody
Speaker 2: actually created.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's so many things that are just different.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Humor is you know, a different taste for everybody, So
Speaker 3: not every what you think is funny, I don't think
Speaker 3: is funny, and vice versa. So none, no humorous bits
Speaker 3: come to mind directly, but it's all with a you know,
Speaker 3: we're not too serious as a brand. So the things
Speaker 3: that we're doing, like we were just at the waste
Speaker 3: management open in Phoenix this weekend, and lots of content
Speaker 3: that we created on that funny, silly, unexpected content that
Speaker 3: was just unlike anything that maybe is humorous or maybe
Speaker 3: it's just different, but got lots of attention online, including
Speaker 3: articles written about like what was haydu doing at the
Speaker 3: waste management open this weekend? So there's different ways to
Speaker 3: connect with all these guys wearing women wearing green suits,
Speaker 3: body suits that started making what is all that? And
Speaker 3: people commenting like what is all that noise in the
Speaker 3: back of the waste management open with haydude? Or what
Speaker 3: is that even? And so we got a chance to
Speaker 3: inject ourselves somewhere to introduce a upcoming golf Hey dude,
Speaker 3: shoe so with pins and aces, so cool stuff unexpected
Speaker 3: as a way to cut through and introduce a new style.
Speaker 2: Okay, all these golfers have endorsement deals. If you look
Speaker 2: at Beats first, it was let's just get the headphones
Speaker 2: on people's heads. Do you go to the PJA golfers
Speaker 2: to just give peers to everybody, or do you make
Speaker 2: deals with specific people? What's the approach?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, just we did something that's unlike anything. We
Speaker 3: did not work with golfers specifically and getting shoes on
Speaker 3: multiple professionals. We were really for the fans and getting
Speaker 3: fans at the Waste Management open to experience, Hey dude,
Speaker 3: with an interactive exhibit and doing things that just got attention.
Speaker 3: And everybody's got a camera, bob, so everybody's posting on
Speaker 3: their own socials to evangelize the brand and the way
Speaker 3: that we activated at the Waste Management, but specifically to
Speaker 3: introduce a new pair of golf shoes that are coming
Speaker 3: out later this month.
Speaker 2: Okay, golf shoes, you know, are traditionally firm, so hey dude,
Speaker 2: is making a golf shoe. You're talking about how soft
Speaker 2: they are. They absolutely are soft.
Speaker 3: So one of the ways that you can really maybe
Speaker 3: you know, cut into a couple of strokes off your
Speaker 3: game is being comfortable and lighter. So they certainly grip,
Speaker 3: of course, which is an important part of golf. But
Speaker 3: I don't think we're advocating that we're for the professional
Speaker 3: golfer to win the Masters. We're for that weekend golfer
Speaker 3: who's out with his or her buddies and friends doing
Speaker 3: a couple of birdie juice before or after a birdie,
Speaker 3: and certainly on the nineteenth hole. We're really more a
Speaker 3: fun spirit than a high performance golf shoe. But it's
Speaker 3: something you can wear and probably get a couple of
Speaker 3: more bogies than birdies.
Speaker 2: Okay, what was the projected retail price?
Speaker 3: I can't remember the price of those, but they'll be
Speaker 3: in the similar vein of what hey dudes are, you know,
Speaker 3: in the seventy dollars range and with pins and aces
Speaker 3: as a great partner. So just a fun way to
Speaker 3: further explore the brand.
Speaker 2: Okay, is that something you started or was that started
Speaker 2: before you came to this brand.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's all part of a more edited assortment of
Speaker 3: who we want to work with and how we come
Speaker 3: to life with different partners, whether they're celebrities or whether
Speaker 3: they're brands or licenses, from SpongeBob SquarePants to Hot Wheels
Speaker 3: to Beetlejuice and on and on and on. Fun ways
Speaker 3: to connect fans of those properties to Hay Dude. And
Speaker 3: so that's something that we've been doing, you know, since
Speaker 3: I was at Crocs the first time around, we were
Speaker 3: doing that and now we want to bring some of
Speaker 3: that to Hey Dude. And the Pins and Asis partners
Speaker 3: have just been great.
Speaker 2: Okay, you come back to Hey Dude. I mean you
Speaker 2: had the Kentucky Fried Chicken, Croc, you had all that
Speaker 2: other stuff. Since you came back to Kroc, what initiatives
Speaker 2: have you started?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I joined in May May first, and you know,
Speaker 3: you lay out the strategy that I suggested earlier. And
Speaker 3: so one of the first things we did is, you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things I like to do is think
Speaker 3: opposites and a brand named Hey Dude, who is looking
Speaker 3: to appeal to a younger female audience while still you know, energizing.
Speaker 3: Our core is to bring Sidney Sweeney on board is
Speaker 3: our brand and beast hugely popular, is loved by lots
Speaker 3: of people as an international, internationally known young woman, and
Speaker 3: it's just cool. She's smart, talented, but also just cool.
Speaker 3: And so that was one of the first moves that
Speaker 3: we made since I returned.
Speaker 2: Let's stop with Sydney Sweeney. You're sitting in the office,
Speaker 2: you're brainstorming, and you say, Sydney Sweeney will be a
Speaker 2: good idea, you go through the channels, you know, what
Speaker 2: kind of reaction do you get? You know, the odds
Speaker 2: of her actually wearing Hay Dudes are not high. What's
Speaker 2: the incentive for her? There's always a monetary incentive. How
Speaker 2: do you convince her this is good for her? Well?
Speaker 3: I think she recognized certainly where Sydney is from. I
Speaker 3: think herself and lots of her friends and family are
Speaker 3: Hey Dude fans. She's from up a certain neck of
Speaker 3: the woods, Idaho, Washington that way, where Hey Dudes are
Speaker 3: enormously popular. So she had an affinity for our brand.
Speaker 3: And because we're unlike anything, she could showcase a different
Speaker 3: side of herself, which really appealed to us as a brand.
Speaker 3: It doesn't take herself too seriously. You know, she's known
Speaker 3: for being an elegant, beautiful woman and you know, oscar
Speaker 3: parties and all that kind of Hollywood showbiz. But she
Speaker 3: has a different side of her and this allowed her
Speaker 3: to showcase that in a really casual way. And I
Speaker 3: think that's what attracted her to Hey Dude, and.
Speaker 2: Certainly what attracted Hey Dude to us to her. Okay,
Speaker 2: so she's in what did you do with her? Oh?
Speaker 3: So she's in. So we started by just an introductory
Speaker 3: video of this is Sidney Sweeney on a rope swing
Speaker 3: jumping into a lake. You know, just talk about how
Speaker 3: casual and unaffected she was by this, and then we
Speaker 3: put her in a new style, a fuzz lined slipper
Speaker 3: from Hey Dude Gone, couldn't keep him in stock And
Speaker 3: in just a couple of weeks, she's a huge part
Speaker 3: of our Spring twenty twenty five work that will be
Speaker 3: unveiling shortly and has a you know, helped craft it
Speaker 3: and it was a hugely important but involved partner to
Speaker 3: create what we're going to unveil in just a few
Speaker 3: short weeks to again make people think differently about Hey
Speaker 3: Dude as a shoe that's not just for him, but
Speaker 3: is for her and is for multiple wearing occasions. And
Speaker 3: Sidney just does it in a really cool and Sidney
Speaker 3: like way that she has this magical ability to pull
Speaker 3: off this elegance that she has, but also this just
Speaker 3: girl next door kind of give somebody the business kind
Speaker 3: of way.
Speaker 2: And so how many videos do you make with Sydney? Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, a lot.
Speaker 3: We do a lot of things to cut through not
Speaker 3: just a sense of humor and unlike anything, but also
Speaker 3: our own sense of fashion and style for the brand
Speaker 3: that you know, she's wearing it in that way as well.
Speaker 3: So lots of different things, because as I said earlier,
Speaker 3: the attention span of people is so short. We only
Speaker 3: need a few seconds of video of Sydney and lots
Speaker 3: of different few seconds of Sydney to have people see it.
Speaker 3: And people are moving. You know that your thumb is
Speaker 3: always moving on your screen, scrolling up, left, right, wherever,
Speaker 3: and so once you see it, you stop and you
Speaker 3: got the message and you keep scrolling. But we got you,
Speaker 3: and Sydney makes you stop on your screen because of
Speaker 3: who she is. So we're just thrilled by that and
Speaker 3: we're excited to roll it out in just a couple
Speaker 3: of short weeks.
Speaker 2: Okay, so we're talking about social media platforms. You have
Speaker 2: this deal with Sydney Sweeney. She's engaged. You do anything traditional,
Speaker 2: whint TV, anything or those.
Speaker 3: Just off the table. Nothing is off the table. We're
Speaker 3: not doing those with Sidney Sweeney. We have done Connected
Speaker 3: TV with Hey Dude since I've been at Hey Dude,
Speaker 3: which is really when you're you know, when you're logging
Speaker 3: onto Amazon Prime there's a spot there, a hey dude
Speaker 3: spot there, and so we've been doing those things. It's television,
Speaker 3: but it's not television. Like perhaps we grew up knowing
Speaker 3: we're not doing any print today. But we do have
Speaker 3: conversations about a little bit more analog. That really came
Speaker 3: up with the you know, the TikTok shutdown that was
Speaker 3: rumored and happened for a hot second, and maybe the
Speaker 3: move to analog is a you know, thinking opposites again, Bob, like,
Speaker 3: is there some things that we should be doing to
Speaker 3: connect with consumers who are not going to have this
Speaker 3: major platform. So all things are on the table. Of course,
Speaker 3: our website, SMS where we text message consumers about things
Speaker 3: that they opt into. No radio, but the variety of
Speaker 3: social media that we do, and then experiential you know,
Speaker 3: part of this trick for any footwear companies to get
Speaker 3: shoes on feet. So whether it's the Houston Rodeo coming
Speaker 3: up in a couple of weeks or Stagecoach where we'll be,
Speaker 3: or the waste management open places like that, we have
Speaker 3: huge activations to get our fans who always come by
Speaker 3: I love Hey dude, I've got five pairs or new
Speaker 3: folks to the party and say I've heard about it
Speaker 3: or I've never tried them on, and then we watched
Speaker 3: their face when they try them on, and away we go.
Speaker 3: I did a little event in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Hey Dude
Speaker 3: is based outside of Boston, and there's this cool little
Speaker 3: event called Flannel Jam every fall. It's at the Marshfield Fairgrounds,
Speaker 3: And so I went on a Saturday with the team,
Speaker 3: and you know, we sold like five thousand dollars worth
Speaker 3: of hay Dudes in just a couple of hours out
Speaker 3: of a makeshift van, and you know, spending that Saturday
Speaker 3: listen to all these jam bands doing some great stuff.
Speaker 3: The amount of people that were coming up to me
Speaker 3: that I love hay Dude, and the amount of people
Speaker 3: I saw wearing hay Dude that walked into the fairgrounds
Speaker 3: with them. So it's just a real exciting experience for
Speaker 3: me and showed the connection that we've got the folks
Speaker 3: that we've just got to continue to build this Hey
Speaker 3: Dude community and that's what we're after.
Speaker 2: So when it comes to online, there's TikTok, there's x
Speaker 2: slash Twitter, there's Instagram reels, there's regular Instagram with photos
Speaker 2: there's Facebook, what works and where are you?
Speaker 3: They all can work. TikTok is certainly our leader in
Speaker 3: the clubhouse because it's the fastest and it allows us
Speaker 3: to reach the most people. Our fan base has tripled
Speaker 3: since I've been at the brand on TikTok. But of
Speaker 3: course Facebook and Instagram and Instagram reels are a huge
Speaker 3: part of what we're up to. Twitter, where we have
Speaker 3: an account or x, we are not active on it.
Speaker 3: We just don't find that to be a productive use
Speaker 3: of our time. It's a different platform for a brand
Speaker 3: like ours. Others do it well, but we're just not
Speaker 3: unlocking that. We want people to explore us through those sites.
Speaker 2: Okay, how let me put your marketing hat on. We're
Speaker 2: in a political era where the Democrats are beaten to
Speaker 2: the ground. The Republicans are dominating both in social discourse
Speaker 2: and power. One of the things about the last election was, oh,
Speaker 2: the Republicans were on podcasts, they were here that in
Speaker 2: terms of it's mostly baby boomer some gen xers. What
Speaker 2: do they not know and should know about how you
Speaker 2: reach customers today? Because we speak about the Democratic Party,
Speaker 2: they didn't And you live in this territory twenty four
Speaker 2: to seven. So if you were advising them, it doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily have to be the Democrats. How do you get
Speaker 2: your message out?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think seems like the Democrats have a more
Speaker 3: popular message, but the way they say it or share
Speaker 3: it just does not come across as authentic as the
Speaker 3: guy that won. Say what you want about the President
Speaker 3: of the United States, and certainly there's been plenty written
Speaker 3: about him, but he just says seemingly what it's on
Speaker 3: his mind, without a filter, and that seems to connect.
Speaker 3: If you measure by the fact that he won the election,
Speaker 3: that would say he connected. And I don't get the
Speaker 3: sense that the left does that to the same degree.
Speaker 3: It just feels more calculated, and Trump just comes across
Speaker 3: as real, which is how we started this discussion. Brands
Speaker 3: or politicians or anyone who just comes across as real,
Speaker 3: I think just has a better shot at success.
Speaker 2: Well that's half of it, and that's really important. But
Speaker 2: in terms of you know, the ratings for cable television,
Speaker 2: you know they don't have even a million people watching.
Speaker 2: So has there been a complete shift of the customer
Speaker 2: to social media too, alternative outlets? And many people don't
Speaker 2: realize this. In the so called establishment or is it
Speaker 2: more well, something works here and something works there.
Speaker 3: No, it's the it's the former. Like there, listen, I'm
Speaker 3: a gen xer. I'm astounded by my own adoption of
Speaker 3: social media. I'll give you an example. You know, I
Speaker 3: travel a lot in my role, and you know, one
Speaker 3: of the joys of travel in a weird way used
Speaker 3: to be you throw it. You check into your hotel room,
Speaker 3: you throw your bag on the ground right, and you
Speaker 3: turn the television on. I can't remember the last time
Speaker 3: I turned the television on in a hotel room. I
Speaker 3: have an iPad and for the brief time I have
Speaker 3: I sit in the chair in the corner of the
Speaker 3: hotel room or on the bed, and I scroll social
Speaker 3: media a variety of things. Twitter to get my news, TikTok,
Speaker 3: to be informed or entertained, or to laugh, to get
Speaker 3: dining tips in the city that I might be in.
Speaker 3: This looks like a cool spot. I don't turn the
Speaker 3: television on unless there's a sporting event, and even that
Speaker 3: I can do on YouTube TV on my iPad. It's
Speaker 3: not as big as screen. But so I'm astounded of
Speaker 3: my own personal adoption as a gen xer. So you know,
Speaker 3: my daughters are digitally native, so if that kind of
Speaker 3: switch happens to me, I mean just folks and kids
Speaker 3: that are born into this which is now a whole generation.
Speaker 3: They don't consume anything the way we did, which is
Speaker 3: why brands like Hey Dude and Stanley before that are
Speaker 3: looking to connect where they are and that's where they are.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're a gen x er when you were out socially,
Speaker 2: when you're not working and you start talking about this,
Speaker 2: do you find the other people of your generation or
Speaker 2: the people that you interact with are saying, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I saw that too, Or are they saying, oh, that's crap,
Speaker 2: I'm not Are you one an outlier or are you
Speaker 2: finding that many people are doing what you're doing.
Speaker 3: I don't know that I'm an outlier, but I'm in
Speaker 3: the minority for sure. For a gen xer, you know,
Speaker 3: there's always the there's the misperception that TikTok is just
Speaker 3: a bunch of young girls dancing, and I know those
Speaker 3: folks come across my for you page every once in
Speaker 3: a while, But I'm looking for like where's the best
Speaker 3: pub in London? And there's lots of answers. I live
Speaker 3: in Boston, and so somehow I'm my for you page,
Speaker 3: the algorithm or my geography. Some guy in a blue
Speaker 3: hat at Emmett's Pub in Boston never been there before.
Speaker 3: It turns out it's around the corner, and this guy's
Speaker 3: alleging it has the best poor of guinness in all
Speaker 3: of Boston. If it wasn't for TikTok, I wouldn't have known.
Speaker 3: It is a five minute walk from my apartment, and
Speaker 3: that is I mean, that's elixir of life. To know
Speaker 3: that there's people out there and these places exist. I
Speaker 3: never would have seen that on television, And Wow, how
Speaker 3: exciting is this? And so I think I'm the outlier
Speaker 3: because people just think it's a waste of time. And
Speaker 3: I know, as so do millions of people, that it's where.
Speaker 3: It's the town square, and that's where you can learn
Speaker 3: so many cool things, fun things, interesting things. It's just
Speaker 3: an incredible thing. I've watched more videos about airplane turbulence
Speaker 3: because I'm so scared of turbulence when I'm flying that
Speaker 3: I feel better now because I hear all these pilots
Speaker 3: telling me not to worry. And now I'm not going
Speaker 3: to see that on CNN or MTV or ESPN or
Speaker 3: just so man, it's so cool to be alive right now,
Speaker 3: to have all this at your fingertips. Which is why
Speaker 3: I don't turn a television on an hotel because I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna feel better about turbulence.
Speaker 2: Okay, did you say this is my job? I need
Speaker 2: to know more about social media? This is a project?
Speaker 2: Or how did you get started?
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm insatiably curious. Yeah, I want to know. I
Speaker 3: want to know what's around the corner. Personally, professionally. That
Speaker 3: is my life. I have an insatiable curiosity and an
Speaker 3: unmistakable sense of what's possible personally, professionally. So listen to
Speaker 3: when I was a kid, Bob. I'll never forget this.
Speaker 3: This is a real analogue, and viewers of a certain
Speaker 3: listeners of a certain age will get this. When I
Speaker 3: was thirteen years old, I was fortunate enough my parents
Speaker 3: took my brother and I to Bermuda, which you know Bermuda,
Speaker 3: you know this is unheard of, and we stayed at
Speaker 3: the Southampton Princess. I don't know if it's still there,
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter. I was more interested in the Reuter's
Speaker 3: ticker behind the front desk of the hotel than I
Speaker 3: was about going to the pool. I couldn't believe something
Speaker 3: like this existed, that I was getting all sorts of
Speaker 3: information in real time. Yeah, I'll never forget it. I
Speaker 3: can still see it through my mind's eye. I grew
Speaker 3: up in northern New Jersey, so I used to fall
Speaker 3: asleep to news radio eighty eight just also to get
Speaker 3: you know, there's always sports on the eights. So before
Speaker 3: the Internet, you couldn't get you know, it was Warner
Speaker 3: Wolf CBS at six thirty, and that's how you got
Speaker 3: your sports or you called sports phone, you know, get
Speaker 3: all the sports news instantly, dial nine seven six one
Speaker 3: three one three. So like, these things are just this
Speaker 3: is just an extension of how I've been all of
Speaker 3: my life, and the fact that this all exists astounds me.
Speaker 3: So what is coming around the corner? AI? AI for
Speaker 3: good and for bad?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's okay, I'm interested in this. That's certainly the
Speaker 2: popular topic. Tell me what's coming around the corner and
Speaker 2: how it's going to affect both your business and the
Speaker 2: average citizen.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, it's certainly going to allow us to tell
Speaker 3: incredible messages to people fast and in ways that inspire
Speaker 3: and interrupt. It's happening right now and it's still in
Speaker 3: its infancy. The ways that we can communicate, the ways
Speaker 3: we can interview and hire as an employer. It's all
Speaker 3: just a few short years away from major shifts. But
Speaker 3: from a marketing perspective and a brand building perspective, the
Speaker 3: opportunity and the danger you have is quite a responsibility
Speaker 3: to do it right. You know, I was an astounded,
Speaker 3: you know last week that the Beatles want a Grammy
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty five using AI and what does that mean?
Speaker 3: You know, the Beatles is kind of a benchmark of
Speaker 3: so many things for so many people. Well, did that
Speaker 3: open the floodgates for it? Was almost a stamp of
Speaker 3: approval or was it something different or more? Really perplexed
Speaker 3: by that question and the outcome of that, but also
Speaker 3: thrilling in a way that that kind of thing can occur.
Speaker 3: So it's a really amazing thing that you know, we're
Speaker 3: doing at hey dude, and doing it in small birds,
Speaker 3: mostly on the creative side. But we're going to see
Speaker 3: how that continues to evolve. But that's certainly a major
Speaker 3: thing of what's next.
Speaker 2: So how are you using it on the creative side?
Speaker 3: Just to certainly fine tune photo shoots. And we recently
Speaker 3: did a partnership, one of our collaborations with the brand Ferbie,
Speaker 3: you know, those acute little characters a fuzz line Ferbie
Speaker 3: shoe and our entire ad, if you call it ad,
Speaker 3: the experience and the way we communicated that was all
Speaker 3: through AI. And there's you know, pundits that we're calling
Speaker 3: it the ad of the week just two or three
Speaker 3: weeks ago because it breaks through and it's a really
Speaker 3: interesting and how we did it was really innovative, and
Speaker 3: it makes you stop your thumb scrolling, and that's part
Speaker 3: of the game. And so there's other things dangerously going around,
Speaker 3: just you know, when we're recording this of celebrities being
Speaker 3: misinterpreted with AI about Kanye West, and I'm sure you've
Speaker 3: seen today that's really really scary and terrible. And how
Speaker 3: we put you know, guardrails around that I don't pretend
Speaker 3: to know, but we're going to have to figure that out.
Speaker 2: Okay, anything else you could say that it's around the
Speaker 2: corner besides AI.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the thing that comes to mind, you know,
Speaker 3: most importantly, I think faster Ways to get you product
Speaker 3: is also around the corner. Of course, you know Amazon,
Speaker 3: you know you see these drone deliveries, which sounds you know,
Speaker 3: out of science fiction, but that's you know, that's coming.
Speaker 3: So it's just a matter of how interruptive it is
Speaker 3: or how distracting or annoying it is, and a level
Speaker 3: of that that society is going to accept. But that's
Speaker 3: certainly people want things faster, they want it now, and
Speaker 3: if a drone or something can fly it to you,
Speaker 3: people are going to want that. And it's just a
Speaker 3: matter of how is it that also relegated regulated, and
Speaker 3: how's the experience not you know, an effrontery to people
Speaker 3: who are not ordering things. That's the trick.
Speaker 2: Okay, you talked originally about fast and young females. Are
Speaker 2: you saying you want to activate young females because you
Speaker 2: have a fashion product or can you say across the
Speaker 2: board they are the most active and reactive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, great, great point all the above. So, as I
Speaker 3: think I said earlier, you know, youth culture drives culture, right,
Speaker 3: but more than ever before, youth female culture drives culture.
Speaker 3: Women more than ever before, you know, are traveling and
Speaker 3: going out in packs. Women typically are bigger fans of
Speaker 3: footwear than guys, they have a bigger community. In addition
Speaker 3: to the type group that they have, they also have
Speaker 3: larger communities and they like to share what they love
Speaker 3: and that influences their friends or their peer groups, and
Speaker 3: so all of those things lead us to that's where
Speaker 3: culture is. And if more women can fall in love
Speaker 3: with a funny little brand with a funny little name,
Speaker 3: there's a there's a great opportunity there to reach more
Speaker 3: people because, as I learned from you know, my last place,
Speaker 3: people want what's cool, and they want what's cool in America.
Speaker 3: Around the world, people want what's cool in America, and women,
Speaker 3: young women are letting the world know what's cool in America.
Speaker 2: Okay, Hey Dude has a male connotation. Is that a
Speaker 2: point of friction or you think about changing the name
Speaker 2: at some point?
Speaker 3: No, not at all. It's not a neither. That is
Speaker 3: our name. It's a funny little name. But you know,
Speaker 3: forty percent of our businesses female consumers already, so there's
Speaker 3: no no worries there. We just need to showcase more
Speaker 3: female focused styles, certainly showcase more ways to wear Hey
Speaker 3: Dude for young women, and that's part of the what
Speaker 3: we're up to as well. Part of the Sydney Sweeney
Speaker 3: work and all those other things, but not not an
Speaker 3: impediment at all. In fact, you know, women call each
Speaker 3: other bro dude. You know one of the top two
Speaker 3: three podcasts is Alex Cooper's Call Me Daddy. Right, So
Speaker 3: there's a power and ownership of these kind of things
Speaker 3: that women have taken. And as exciting time, let's assume
Speaker 3: you will have a product that you want to sell
Speaker 3: to males. Are you telling us that the best way
Speaker 3: to reach males is to reach the women and then
Speaker 3: they'll tell the males. That's certainly true. That is certainly true.
Speaker 3: Certainly from a gift giving perspective. You know, a lot
Speaker 3: of guys are just hey, throw another new size eleven
Speaker 3: in the cart. You know, guys are like that, right,
Speaker 3: But guys also want what's cool, they want what's comfortable.
Speaker 3: Guys also want what's dependable, and so from a fashion standpoint,
Speaker 3: most guys are fast fashion or they're just comfortable. And
Speaker 3: we want to make sure the guys that love us,
Speaker 3: and there's lots of them, stay in love with Hey, dude,
Speaker 3: but we certainly want to bring a lot more people
Speaker 3: into the tent.
Speaker 2: Okay, you have all this focus on women, yet the
Speaker 2: conversation at large is the opposite. Why do people not
Speaker 2: know this extreme power of women question?
Speaker 3: It's a great question. I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 2: I do.
Speaker 3: So that's what I'm focused on with the Heydude team
Speaker 3: is making sure that we're bringing more people into the
Speaker 3: tent and recognizing the purchasing power, the cultural power, the
Speaker 3: community power of women in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2: Okay, you said you're from New Jersey. What did your
Speaker 2: parents do for a living?
Speaker 3: My father was My parents grew up in the Bronx,
Speaker 3: New York. I was born in New York City. My
Speaker 3: father was in the United States Navy on the USS
Speaker 3: Wasp post World War Two, and he left the Navy
Speaker 3: and started fixing typewriters in New York City for IBM
Speaker 3: in the suit in the uh you know, the shoes
Speaker 3: carrying the case fix and typewriters, and he, like so
Speaker 3: many folks of his generation, worked his way to become
Speaker 3: an executive with IBM. We moved a lot as a
Speaker 3: young guy. As a young kid, we moved a few
Speaker 3: times before I was ten years old, and my dad
Speaker 3: raised you know, me and my brother and did well
Speaker 3: enough that my mom could raise us. You know, my
Speaker 3: mom didn't work outside of the home, but she certainly
Speaker 3: worked because she had myself and my brother. We made
Speaker 3: her work hard. So we were fortunate to grow up
Speaker 3: in northern New Jersey for you know, since I was
Speaker 3: ten years old and my dad carved it out and is,
Speaker 3: you know, an incredible guy. We're nothing alike, but he
Speaker 3: is an incredible guy. Still with us. Both my parents are,
Speaker 3: thank goodness, and that's what they did. They lived the
Speaker 3: American dream.
Speaker 2: Okay that moving around as a young child, having to
Speaker 2: fit in, did that effect your personality for sure?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it affects me to this day. So move to
Speaker 3: U born in New York City, lived upstate New York
Speaker 3: or Westchester, and then moved to Virginia and Illinois, all
Speaker 3: before I was ten. And so the fear of walking
Speaker 3: into a new cafeteria is still with me today. I
Speaker 3: don't like walking into office cafeteria. I don't like looking
Speaker 3: for somebody to sit with. That is was then and
Speaker 3: it still carries with me all these years later. I'm
Speaker 3: certainly more comfortable than I ever was, and I certainly
Speaker 3: do that because that's part of the job when you're
Speaker 3: leading a company, but it's certainly part of my psychology
Speaker 3: and how I enter any room.
Speaker 2: Okay, you have this anxiety, but concommonly, is there a
Speaker 2: positive element of this?
Speaker 3: It's a good question. Probably not a positive quality to that.
Speaker 3: That's a I mean a positive quality of moving around
Speaker 3: having to interact with me. Oh sure, oh, I said,
Speaker 3: of course, yeah, of course, yes. You know, I had
Speaker 3: an appreciation for other things before I was ten years old.
Speaker 3: You know, I knew you know, I knew where things were.
Speaker 3: I knew what Chicago looked like. When I was nine,
Speaker 3: you know, I knew what you know, the nation's capital
Speaker 3: we lived in Northern Virginia looked like. I knew what
Speaker 3: what I knew, the kids like the Bears. You know,
Speaker 3: you don't know these things, especially in the seventies, or
Speaker 3: you don't, but I did, And so it gave me
Speaker 3: an appreciation for maybe that always what's around the corner
Speaker 3: kind of a mentality that I had because I didn't
Speaker 3: know if we were ever going to be staying wherever
Speaker 3: we were because of my father's job, which was you know, thrilling, exciting,
Speaker 3: but also daunting when you get that we're going to move.
Speaker 3: So so yeah, of course, I think there's a lot
Speaker 3: of good, but the anxiety of that cafeteria table, which
Speaker 3: I took to my daughter's Unfortunately, you know, we moved
Speaker 3: a few times, I sadly, you know, cursed my daughters
Speaker 3: with the same thing my father cursed me, and I
Speaker 3: put curse and quotes, of course, but one of my
Speaker 3: first questions through my girls when we moved is you
Speaker 3: know who did you eat lunch with? It wasn't what
Speaker 3: did you learn, It wasn't how school, It was who
Speaker 3: did you have lunch with? And I would ask that
Speaker 3: question with my eyes kind of winced and my teeth gritted,
Speaker 3: because I know what that's like. And so I was
Speaker 3: transferring some of my whatever that is psychosis or anxiety
Speaker 3: on them unfairly, But it meant something to me because
Speaker 3: I know what it's like, and it hurt then, and
Speaker 3: I didn't want my daughters to feel the same thing.
Speaker 2: So what's your personality? Are you more of a lone
Speaker 2: or outsider? Are you the type of person who has
Speaker 2: a million friends and is contacting people all day?
Speaker 3: I have the same friends since I moved to New
Speaker 3: Jersey and fifth grade. We're all on a text thread
Speaker 3: every day. So I've got a tight circle of friends
Speaker 3: since I was eleven years old ten years old, which
Speaker 3: is an amazing thing to say, in an amazing gift.
Speaker 3: But then I make new friends along the way, and
Speaker 3: the friends that I make I'm really really close with
Speaker 3: and have influenced my life, you know, even my career.
Speaker 3: Some of the most important people in my life are
Speaker 3: people that influence my career who I've ended up being
Speaker 3: the best of friends with. So it's tight. I'm not
Speaker 3: the life of the party ever, but I'm comfortable being alone.
Speaker 3: But the friends that I have are deep and meaningful
Speaker 3: and long.
Speaker 2: So let's say I say, Hey, we're going to go
Speaker 2: to a party. You don't know anybody, none of them
Speaker 2: work in your business, so you're gonna say, hey, let's go.
Speaker 2: You say, well, you're gonna see Well, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: I'd rather stay home.
Speaker 3: I would prefer not to go, but when I go,
Speaker 3: I'm you know, I'm an irishman, right, So I do
Speaker 3: have that certain gift of gab when I choose to gab,
Speaker 3: and I've got a lot of really cool stories to
Speaker 3: tell and a really good life experience that people like
Speaker 3: to hear. When I end up sharing some of it,
Speaker 3: so I don't wear the lampshade, but I can get after.
Speaker 2: It, Okay, good student, bad student.
Speaker 3: I was average at everything, average at everything, good not
Speaker 3: I don't know why, but average at everything, and you know,
Speaker 3: medium part of my class, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 3: But I was a late bloomer, you know. And I
Speaker 3: also just because of that moving around, I think I
Speaker 3: lacked a lot of confidence that I didn't know I
Speaker 3: was actually good at quite a few things when I
Speaker 3: was in middle school and high school. That it turns out,
Speaker 3: you know, later in life, you start to realize, you
Speaker 3: know what, maybe I was better if I had some confidence,
Speaker 3: or had a different kind of coach or somebody, things
Speaker 3: could have been different then. But I'm not hung up
Speaker 3: on any of that. I just, you know, it was
Speaker 3: a late bloomer. I remember you couldn't you back in
Speaker 3: those days, and maybe they still do it. You had
Speaker 3: to do like the eight mile run, you know, you
Speaker 3: had to run for eight eight minute eight minute run
Speaker 3: or something like that, whatever it was, eight minute mile,
Speaker 3: there you go, man, and something you know in middle
Speaker 3: school and I hated it, like I was out of breath,
Speaker 3: like I couldn't do it, you know, it was kind
Speaker 3: of a little chubby, little pudgy little guy. And my
Speaker 3: favorite baseball player at that age was Carlton Fists because
Speaker 3: his nickname was Pudge. You know, it was like looking
Speaker 3: for connection and I couldn't do it like I just was.
Speaker 3: But you know, years later, I've run three marathons in
Speaker 3: under four hours. You know, So these things happen. Life
Speaker 3: is long, and if you're going to be hung up
Speaker 3: on who you were, well that's a waste of your life.
Speaker 3: And so the the things that have happened in my
Speaker 3: life and even just the last fifteen years have been
Speaker 3: extraordinary career wise, personally, so many amazing things.
Speaker 2: So you graduate from high school, then what.
Speaker 3: I go to college in New Jersey. Well, actually I
Speaker 3: started college at Northeastern up in Boston, and I hate
Speaker 3: to say it, I think I chose Northeastern because I
Speaker 3: was a giant and still I am a big fan of
Speaker 3: the Red Sox, the Bruins, the Patriots, and the Celtics.
Speaker 3: And a word to your listeners, that's not the reason
Speaker 3: to choose a college or university. But I was a
Speaker 3: huge fan of those teams and that's why I chose Northeastern.
Speaker 3: But I was too immature to know what to do.
Speaker 3: My high school and grammar school friends were no longer
Speaker 3: with me, and I did not adapt well. And I
Speaker 3: also just didn't like the city environment. I wasn't ready
Speaker 3: for that then. So I transferred to a little known
Speaker 3: Rider University in New Jersey, and you know, graduated, I
Speaker 3: don't know two point eight, two point nine, you know,
Speaker 3: something like that. It was an unremarkable scholastic career. But
Speaker 3: I graduated, and I got a job right out of college.
Speaker 2: But just before this, when you're going to Rider, yeah,
Speaker 2: are you living at home? Are you living in an apartment?
Speaker 3: I'm living in the dorm. I was a resident advisor
Speaker 3: for two and a half years at Ryder, So you know,
Speaker 3: you got your own room. There's a little bit of
Speaker 3: evidence there right right right, And you got a phone,
Speaker 3: which mattered then, and you didn't you didn't have to
Speaker 3: pay for and I got a little bit of scratch,
Speaker 3: so I had some spending money. And you know, an
Speaker 3: unremarkable career at Ryder. That there's they wouldn't remember me,
Speaker 3: and they shouldn't remember me.
Speaker 2: So you graduated, and you did what I graduated.
Speaker 3: And this is the day, Bob, where you know one
Speaker 3: hundred envelopes, one hundred resumes, one hundred stamps, and you
Speaker 3: send them out. I can't even imagine this was a thing,
Speaker 3: just hoping it got there, hoping somebody opened it, hoping
Speaker 3: somebody would call you back. What And I got a
Speaker 3: call back? You know, my mom got a call back.
Speaker 3: You know, this is the day. You know, I was
Speaker 3: living at home and my mom would answer, Terrence, it's
Speaker 3: for you, you know, and it's your possible future employer. The
Speaker 3: thought of that is so staggering today. But I got
Speaker 3: a job with the MWW Group, a PR agency in
Speaker 3: northern New Jersey. At the time, I think I was
Speaker 3: one of the first ten employees of the MWW Group.
Speaker 3: And now if you drive by MetLife Stadium in New Jersey,
Speaker 3: you'll see the W building on the other side of
Speaker 3: MetLife Stadium. So Michael Kempner and the group that hired
Speaker 3: me then still run it and grow it into a
Speaker 3: huge agency. But this is really funny. So I get
Speaker 3: this job, right, and I'm an account coordinator at twenty two,
Speaker 3: twenty three years old, and you know, you're getting press
Speaker 3: clippings and you have to clip them out for the
Speaker 3: different clients of the agency from Burrell's or you know,
Speaker 3: and you're cutting and pasting them and using you know,
Speaker 3: glue tape to you know, this is what you did.
Speaker 3: And I filled in for the receptionist when she went
Speaker 3: to lunch, and I had to get the coffee supplies
Speaker 3: every Monday morning for the office for the week. And
Speaker 3: that's what you do when you're twenty two. And they
Speaker 3: gave me a little account. This is a PR agency
Speaker 3: and I'm an account coordinator, so cut your chops on this, Terrence.
Speaker 3: And they gave me a little indoor amusement park in Paramus,
Speaker 3: New Jersey called sports World. And at the time whatever
Speaker 3: this is, nineteen ninety one, right around there, this indoor
Speaker 3: amusement park was a pretty cool thing. It was a
Speaker 3: giant box at inside where bumper cars and cafeteria with
Speaker 3: you know, hot dogs and popcorn and rides and ball
Speaker 3: pits and all sorts of stuff, and it was a
Speaker 3: really popular place. What am I going to do with
Speaker 3: this as a PR account coordinator? You know, press release
Speaker 3: to say here, have your kid's birthday party here, or
Speaker 3: they got a new ride whatever. Not exactly exciting stuff.
Speaker 3: But one evening, just as I'm about to go home.
Speaker 3: The desk phone, big giant desk phone rings and I
Speaker 3: pick it up and it's the owner of Sports World.
Speaker 3: It says, Terrence, get down here, Like, what's wrong? Because
Speaker 3: Terrence get down here with somebody hurt? Is anything wrong?
Speaker 3: He's like, no, Michael Jackson has rented the place for
Speaker 3: the night. What so, Yeah, Michael Jackson is here and
Speaker 3: he's rented the place for the night. We're closed, so
Speaker 3: all right now, I gotta be honest with you, Bob.
Speaker 3: If the iPhone existed, then I probably would have gone
Speaker 3: down to Sports World to what to try and get
Speaker 3: a selfie with Michael Jackson. But it didn't exist. So
Speaker 3: instead of taking my iPhone, which didn't exist in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety one, I got on the phone and I called
Speaker 3: every assignment desk that I had in my Bacon's Guide.
Speaker 3: I know where Michael Jackson is tonight. Called me back,
Speaker 3: I know where Michael Jackson is tonight. The phone rang
Speaker 3: like it was you know, so everybody called me back
Speaker 3: and lo and behold. The next day and the next week,
Speaker 3: I had the biggest score in the history of the
Speaker 3: Young MWW group and change my career there. I promoted
Speaker 3: to an account executive and now I'm working with Continental Airlines,
Speaker 3: you know. And that's what can happen in life if
Speaker 3: you're ready for your audition. And so that was a
Speaker 3: gift to me, and that changed my career at the
Speaker 3: MWW group as a twenty three year old. Next thing
Speaker 3: I know, I'm on the runway at Continental Airlines in Newark,
Speaker 3: New Jersey with Lloyd Benson, you know. So it's amazing
Speaker 3: what can happen in a young career if you're ready
Speaker 3: for the moment.
Speaker 2: Okay, you go to Continental, play it out from there.
Speaker 3: So I just didn't know if I liked doing what
Speaker 3: I was doing, and so I went to work for
Speaker 3: a nonprofit in northern New Jersey, a long term care
Speaker 3: facility and psychiatric hospital. Yeah, the real fun stuff, Bob, And.
Speaker 2: Wait, wait just to stay there. Yeah, you're working with
Speaker 2: an amusement park, you're working with Continental era Lines. What
Speaker 2: is the motivation? I don't money? To get escape where
Speaker 2: you were? Why'd you do it?
Speaker 3: I don't have an answer for that. Genius or stupidity
Speaker 3: or somewhere in between, because it wasn't the money. It
Speaker 3: was a nonprofit. But I just wanted to try something else.
Speaker 3: And so I'm working for this medical center. It's a nonprofit,
Speaker 3: as I mentioned, and so one of my responsibilities was
Speaker 3: to put together an annual fundraising dinner, you know, the
Speaker 3: rubber chicken round table, and a whole bunch of donors
Speaker 3: and supporters arrive and I'm giving an appeal, you know,
Speaker 3: from the dais the main stage there with the podium,
Speaker 3: and I have a photo of this, which is a
Speaker 3: surreptitious photo that I didn't know I even had or
Speaker 3: somebody took it. But in the front row, in the
Speaker 3: front table, with his back to me was a gentleman
Speaker 3: who the next morning called me and I thought, oh wow,
Speaker 3: I got one of these high rollers to write a
Speaker 3: big check to the medical center. Look at me, I've
Speaker 3: got a big score. And he says, let's go to
Speaker 3: breakfast tomorrow. We go to breakfast that I'm ready for
Speaker 3: him to write a big check, and he says, I
Speaker 3: want you to be my marketing manager for Amror Prize.
Speaker 3: I don't know this guy, never met him.
Speaker 2: In my life.
Speaker 3: And this was actually called American Express Financially Advisors at
Speaker 3: the time part of American Express, and now it's Amerorprize,
Speaker 3: which is one of the leading financial companies in the world,
Speaker 3: and so I go get my series seven, series sixty three,
Speaker 3: Series sixty five to sell a market financial products in
Speaker 3: northern New Jersey. And what luck, you know. And you know,
Speaker 3: I think he got my salary from like twenty six
Speaker 3: thousand to fifty eight thousand, which was ridiculous, you know.
Speaker 3: But I'm now in a new field, and I bounced
Speaker 3: around the financial services for a while, and I passed
Speaker 3: another audition as I had this really cool idea to
Speaker 3: invite people to the movies to correct new customers. You know,
Speaker 3: we were looking for mom and pop to come in
Speaker 3: and talk about their financial goals and do a financial plan.
Speaker 3: And so I invited them to the movies, your local cinema,
Speaker 3: and before for the movie, I would do a ten
Speaker 3: minute presentation on realizing life's streams through financial planning, and
Speaker 3: I would film movie theaters because everybody loves the movies.
Speaker 3: And out of that we would get a few appointments
Speaker 3: and people would come in to meet with financial planners
Speaker 3: and we did some good business that way. And one
Speaker 3: night an executive from Prudential. Again I'm from New Jersey.
Speaker 3: Prudential is one of the leading employers in New Jersey
Speaker 3: and a powerhouse is in the audience, and she calls
Speaker 3: me the next day says you should come work for
Speaker 3: me in Newark, the headquarters. So I did, and Lisa
Speaker 3: is still one of my best friends today. She was
Speaker 3: just with my daughter in London a couple of weeks ago.
Speaker 3: But Bob, I hated it. I hated financial services. It
Speaker 3: was not for me. I really fell. I was a
Speaker 3: young guy, still thirty and a daughter one on the way,
Speaker 3: and I'm a vice.
Speaker 2: Oh well, wait, just to take a side route here.
Speaker 2: Where do you meet your wife in when? Yeah, so
Speaker 2: I meet her.
Speaker 3: We both had a summer job in college, and we
Speaker 3: knew each other from the hallways of our summer job.
Speaker 3: And one Friday evening on Route seventeen in Paramus, New Jersey,
Speaker 3: there was a Compact disc World And you and many
Speaker 3: of your listeners recognize the power of compact discs and
Speaker 3: CDs in the late eighties early nineties, and how Friday
Speaker 3: was payday and you made a pilgrimager. I did CD
Speaker 3: World on Fridays to just get what I needed to get.
Speaker 3: And so as I'm browsing through the s's Springsteen Southside,
Speaker 3: little Steven Sinatra I am from New Jersey. She walks
Speaker 3: in and I recognize her from our summer job, and
Speaker 3: we talked for a few minutes. And then the next
Speaker 3: day we saw each other in the hall. What did
Speaker 3: you buy? Then we started trading CDs and now your
Speaker 3: two daughters later in all these years, so music again
Speaker 3: shows up in my life in an unexpected and surreptitious way.
Speaker 2: Okay, since you met her and she's your age contemporary,
Speaker 2: what was she doing career wise? And to what degree
Speaker 2: was she advising you on your career?
Speaker 3: So she spent thirty five years with a major accounting firm,
Speaker 3: one of the big I don't remember. I think it
Speaker 3: was Big eight when she started. He went to eight
Speaker 3: to five, you know, I don't know. She was with
Speaker 3: one of the last one standing just until recently. So
Speaker 3: thirty five years, and the gift that she gave us
Speaker 3: was stability. She was working from home before COVID, twenty
Speaker 3: years before COVID, and knew how to balance all that,
Speaker 3: do an incredible job and raise two remarkable young women,
Speaker 3: two daughters that I mentioned earlier, And so that was
Speaker 3: an incredible gift to us. And she was able through
Speaker 3: you know, the firm's generosity because she did great for them.
Speaker 3: They did great by her that we could move to
Speaker 3: the various places that I moved. Is this career arc
Speaker 3: that I'm walking you through or boring you with and
Speaker 3: starts to unfold and so an incredible gift that you
Speaker 3: know she received and that you know we were both
Speaker 3: fortunate to have.
Speaker 2: So she's a CPA, she is not.
Speaker 3: She she did a lot of the training and the
Speaker 3: things that CPAs and the firm needs to keep licensed
Speaker 3: and keep you know, keep them honest.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you're in financial services, you hate it? Yeah,
Speaker 2: so what's the next step. So I'm in the headquarters.
Speaker 2: I'm a vice president of.
Speaker 3: Marketing for Prudential. This should be the dream of every
Speaker 3: kid from New Jersey, right, you know the Devil's play
Speaker 3: in the Prudential Center, And it was, you know, I
Speaker 3: was bored of being bored because boredom is boredom. And
Speaker 3: a friend of mine calls me and says, hey, there's
Speaker 3: a company out of Dallas, Texas called foot Action that
Speaker 3: is relocating to Mahwan, New Jersey, and nobody wants to go.
Speaker 3: Nobody wants to relocate from Dallas to Mahwan, New Jersey.
Speaker 3: So you should talk to this guy that I know great.
Speaker 3: So I talked to this guy and it happens to
Speaker 3: be Willie Smith. Will Smith, not the Fresh Prince, but
Speaker 3: Will Smith, and he's the vice president of marketing for
Speaker 3: foot Action in mahwan, New Jersey. And will takes a
Speaker 3: chance on this financial services guy and I go backwards
Speaker 3: in life from a VP at thirty two years old
Speaker 3: to a director of marketing for foot Action. Foot Action
Speaker 3: still exists, but at the time it was the leading footwear,
Speaker 3: casual sneaker brand for young kids. And Bob within three months,
Speaker 3: I'm going from selling mutual funds, annuities, and long term
Speaker 3: care insurance to being on stage with Beyonce in Houston, Texas.
Speaker 3: I have a photo to prove it. A couple of
Speaker 3: weeks later, I'm on stage at the Apollo Theater because
Speaker 3: we worked with Nike, because we sell a lot of
Speaker 3: Jordan's and air Force ones, and we opened a new
Speaker 3: store on one hundred and twenty fifth Street, and the
Speaker 3: only way to get tickets to the Nike wake up
Speaker 3: call at the Apollo is to buy a pair of
Speaker 3: Nikes at our new foot Action store on one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty fifth Street. I am living the dream as
Speaker 3: a music fan, as a footwear sneaker kid. You gotta
Speaker 3: be kidding me, like this is the greatest thing ever.
Speaker 3: And that didn't last too long because it was I
Speaker 3: guess eighteen months. Two years later, there was a giant,
Speaker 3: you know, town hall in the big Assembly area and
Speaker 3: we were told something's up. And if we were your
Speaker 3: brothers and sisters, we would tell you to get your
Speaker 3: resume together. And so I got my resume together, and
Speaker 3: so did Willie Smith. And Willie Smith ended up going
Speaker 3: out to Saint Louis, Missouri. He was a Rochelle New Rochelle,
Speaker 3: New Rock City kid and Long Island kid, and he
Speaker 3: moved out to Saint Louis to become the VP of
Speaker 3: Marketing for Famous Footwear, one of the leading family footwear
Speaker 3: brands in the United States. And he calls me up.
Speaker 3: It says, Ryles, you got to come out to Saint Louis.
Speaker 3: I'm not moving to Saint Louis. I'm from New Jersey?
Speaker 3: Are you kidding me? And let's put this. Willie is real,
Speaker 3: real persuasive, and so moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, and
Speaker 3: five years of incredible experience growth, learning a lot of
Speaker 3: things at Famous Footwear in Saint Louis, seeing incredible leaders too,
Speaker 3: like Diane Sullivan and others who are just showed me
Speaker 3: how to do things that I didn't know that I
Speaker 3: was going to have to do someday, because right now
Speaker 3: I'm already in all my life, I've outkicked my coverage.
Speaker 3: And now I'm in Saint Louis and incredible experience there,
Speaker 3: incredible life moments there. And then I go pay a
Speaker 3: visit to Crocs. Famous Footwear sells Crocs at the time,
Speaker 3: still does, And I fly out to Colorado, where Crocs
Speaker 3: is based just outside a boulder, and I go into
Speaker 3: the Crocs boardroom to do my you know, spiel of
Speaker 3: why you should be spending more money Famous Footwear to
Speaker 3: sell more Crocs. And I do my thing in the boardroom, leave,
Speaker 3: and two or three weeks later, I get a call
Speaker 3: from somebody at Crocs. We'd like you to be the
Speaker 3: guy that runs the America's marketing for Crocs, which you
Speaker 3: moved to Colorado. I'm not from Saint Louis. Colorado seems
Speaker 3: like a really cool place to live. My brother lives
Speaker 3: out here, as do my parents. They moved from New
Speaker 3: Jersey and the East Coast many years earlier, so let's
Speaker 3: give it a whirl. And we moved to Colorado and
Speaker 3: I'm the director of Marketing for Crocs and then the
Speaker 3: CMO for Crocs, and thanks to an incredible team, we
Speaker 3: turned that thing around.
Speaker 2: Okay, Ros had a real negative reputation. Okay, people were
Speaker 2: making jokes about them, plastic shoes, etc. Ay, why did
Speaker 2: you take the job? B was everybody on the same page.
Speaker 2: Something's got to change in what we were steps.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I took the job because it was a brand
Speaker 3: and people hated it. That smells like money. To me, Well, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 2: People hated it. That smells like money. Explain that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So when I was the CMO of Crocs. When
Speaker 3: I started, there was a meme that had a photo
Speaker 3: of pair of Crocs and it said those holes are
Speaker 3: where your dignity leaks out.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 3: That hung on my wall. I looked at it every
Speaker 3: day as motivation. And again, nobody hated Crocs. It was
Speaker 3: just a brand that was made fun of and there
Speaker 3: was tension to that. And when there's that kind of tension,
Speaker 3: you know, as Reggie Jackson said, back in the seventies,
Speaker 3: they don't boo, nobody d and so aha, like there's
Speaker 3: something here and we just need to make ourselves more relevant.
Speaker 3: Crocs did not have an awareness problem. Everybody knew Crocs.
Speaker 3: But if we can make it more relevant, that was
Speaker 3: the opportunity. And thanks to my colleagues, we made it
Speaker 3: more relevant and then some and helped turn Crocs into
Speaker 3: this extraordinary story in footwear and in brands and in culture.
Speaker 3: And again, how lucky am I? You know, it's almost
Speaker 3: like Forrest Gump. I just bump into these things or
Speaker 3: they find me and you change Crocs and change my
Speaker 3: life in the biggest way.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's the general. Be more specific. Everyone knows Crocs.
Speaker 2: There's a negative take. What were the first steps and
Speaker 2: when did you realize you were onto something? And then
Speaker 2: where'd you go from there? Yeah?
Speaker 3: The first steps was actually to We brought Drew Barrymore
Speaker 3: on board and it was the first opportunity we had
Speaker 3: to work with celebrity.
Speaker 2: Whose idea was that.
Speaker 3: It was a mutual decision. Certainly, the CEO of Crocs
Speaker 3: and I spoke about one of the quickest ways to
Speaker 3: cut through is celebrity partnerships. That's just the fact they
Speaker 3: don't all work, but is the fastest way. And Drew Barrymore,
Speaker 3: God love her brought us an instant credibility with people.
Speaker 3: It just changed the perception of the brain. Oh that's
Speaker 3: Drew Barrymore. Wait are crocs?
Speaker 2: Wait?
Speaker 3: What's this CrOx? Maybe there's something that I've been missing.
Speaker 3: And she's just an absolutely lovely soul. And she was
Speaker 3: the first thing to help us put a flag in
Speaker 3: the ground. Where the other thing that happens, Bob is
Speaker 3: you know, the the Hollywood agencies, they smell blood in
Speaker 3: the water. CROs has some money. I wonder who else
Speaker 3: they'd consider hiring. And that she opened the doors for
Speaker 3: other celebrities to begin working with crocs, to also widen
Speaker 3: our aperture of who to work with to get a
Speaker 3: more global presence. People like John Cena we could started
Speaker 3: wearing crocs for us. Prianka Chopra also one of the
Speaker 3: loveliest women I've ever met in my entire life and kindest.
Speaker 3: She bought the whole crew when we wrapped, she bought
Speaker 3: them all champagne and toasted the crew. I mean just
Speaker 3: and so now people around the world are starting to see,
Speaker 3: wait that weird American brand that shoot with the holes
Speaker 3: in it. Drew Barrymore and John Cena and Priyanka Chopra
Speaker 3: and then some Asian superstars in Korea and China. But
Speaker 3: Drew Barrymore helped open that aperture and widen it where
Speaker 3: now the brand was in a little different spot and
Speaker 3: you could start to see those green shoots and then
Speaker 3: really the.
Speaker 4: The the the turning point, like this is the moment
Speaker 4: where the plot changes, you know, bang on the piano keys.
Speaker 3: Here a young woman named Toria Roth, twenty three years old.
Speaker 3: She walks into my office on the CMO of Crocs.
Speaker 3: She just finished her internship with us and we hired
Speaker 3: her on full time. She walks in my office, sheepishly
Speaker 3: knocks on my door, you know, the CMO's door, and says, hey,
Speaker 3: t did you see this? And she shows me a
Speaker 3: photo of post Malone wearing Crocs and I didn't see it.
Speaker 3: She saw it, and it didn't take more than two
Speaker 3: seconds to know what was up. And so Kerry Macker
Speaker 3: from Universal Music Group that represented post Malone, she gets
Speaker 3: in touch with us and we create the first celebrity
Speaker 3: collaboration with Crocs, the post Malones and it crashed our website.
Speaker 3: This is one of those moments, Bob, that I can
Speaker 3: see unfold and slow emotion. It's a big deal to
Speaker 3: the company. We've never done something like this before. We're
Speaker 3: about to go live at nine am in Colorado or
Speaker 3: ten am in Colorado. We get the entire company into
Speaker 3: the giant cafeteria assembly area. We have the big screens
Speaker 3: up with our data points to see this first sale,
Speaker 3: and and we go live and the system crashes. There
Speaker 3: were so many people. We were not prepared for it.
Speaker 3: And I'm the guy like, I'm the ringleader, the pt
Speaker 3: barnum of it all. And it was a mortifyingly excitingly
Speaker 3: incredible experience. I knew we just crashed crocs dot com.
Speaker 3: Everything changes from here on out, and it did.
Speaker 2: Okay, Just to go back a step, celebrities are not cheap.
Speaker 2: There are some companies with huge marketing budgets. Others don't
Speaker 2: believe in it. You know, how do you decide what
Speaker 2: percentage of you know, revenue to dedicate to these people
Speaker 2: in terms of return? Is there some math involved? It
Speaker 2: purely a hunch.
Speaker 3: For me, It's all the above. I do have an
Speaker 3: eye and thanks to Toria Roth. She saw this, and
Speaker 3: so post Malone at that moment was on the come up.
Speaker 3: So there were ways to afford Post Malone then. And
Speaker 3: the next up was Luke Combs. He hadn't hit yet,
Speaker 3: but I saw this guy through social media and just
Speaker 3: you know, just constant reading and you know that curiosity,
Speaker 3: and he started to appear in different places that I'm
Speaker 3: looking for new music, like okay, who's this Luke Combs guy?
Speaker 3: And then you see a photo of him, like this
Speaker 3: is a Crocs guy. So he was on the come
Speaker 3: up also, and so but then you do some math.
Speaker 3: You do how many Instagram followers they have, and if
Speaker 3: ten percent of those, you know, go to our website
Speaker 3: and five percent convert, what kind of dollars and cents
Speaker 3: could there be here? You do those kind of rough calculations,
Speaker 3: but it's also hunch. It's also kind of who their
Speaker 3: audience is and their trajectory. And that's happened a lot
Speaker 3: in my life of betting on folks and also being
Speaker 3: a leader who listens to you know, Torrio who's twenty three,
Speaker 3: or Pejor Rodriguez who came into my office. He grew
Speaker 3: up in Puerto Rico and he said, at do you
Speaker 3: know who bad Bunny is? And I didn't, but he did,
Speaker 3: and he knew the impact that bad Bunny would have
Speaker 3: for Crocs and he was right. And so to be
Speaker 3: a listener and a leader who's open to good ideas
Speaker 3: can come from anywhere has transformed brands. And if you're
Speaker 3: just close minded, and if you think you have all
Speaker 3: the answers, then you're probably not going to win. But
Speaker 3: you do have to have some of the answers.
Speaker 2: Okay, But there was the traditional Croc shoe back not
Speaker 2: long after the Croc started, they started to put fur
Speaker 2: on them and stuff like that. Forget that. You now
Speaker 2: have all the celebrities involved, you start changing the product.
Speaker 2: Show me about that.
Speaker 3: Sure, well, with a great product team, you know. So
Speaker 3: I was the CMO, not the chief product officer. But
Speaker 3: now it's a similar strategy. You build the core. And
Speaker 3: we returned under my marketing leadership, we returned to the
Speaker 3: classic Croc. Kroc was doing lots of different stuff when
Speaker 3: I got the gig, and we just brought it back
Speaker 3: to basics. And there you build the core and then
Speaker 3: you add more. And the fantastic product team started to, Yeah,
Speaker 3: put fuzz in crocs, which is a huge seller to
Speaker 3: this day. Add height do partnerships with Christopher Kaine or
Speaker 3: Balenciaga to get just that different kind of style. And
Speaker 3: then gibbets, those little things that you put in the holes,
Speaker 3: have been an incredible success story because it allows people
Speaker 3: to personalize their crocs, which is, you know, such a
Speaker 3: vital part of contemporary society. And so so the combination
Speaker 3: of new product introductions and celebrity partnerships and then it
Speaker 3: became like the Got Milk Mustache bob where everybody wanted
Speaker 3: to wear the milk mustache and almost any celebrity or
Speaker 3: brand that we called who wanted to create their own crocs.
Speaker 3: And that's something that is still an active success story today.
Speaker 2: Ye know, from my perspective, the gibbets started with the
Speaker 2: public and then you got involved. Is that an accurate description.
Speaker 3: No, We started to we were photographing our shoes naked,
Speaker 3: which makes no sense. We were selling gibbets, but we
Speaker 3: were not photographing them and not encouraging people to do that.
Speaker 3: So we got behind it and then our fans started
Speaker 3: to take over, and that's when you know a hit.
Speaker 3: You know, our fans started to label Crocs fully loaded,
Speaker 3: you know, when you fill all twenty six holes with gibbets,
Speaker 3: and it allows people to express themselves. And that's another
Speaker 3: key component of Crocs's success is the ability to just
Speaker 3: personalize something you wear and extend your own personality, whatever
Speaker 3: that may be to the brand. And our product team
Speaker 3: just continued to innovate and still does at Crocs. And
Speaker 3: it changed my life where people started writing articles about me,
Speaker 3: which again, how did this happen to this guy from
Speaker 3: New Jersey? But it did. And then I got a
Speaker 3: call about his bottle company called Stanley that nobody had
Speaker 3: heard of, including myself. But you know, it's not every
Speaker 3: day that they're calling a CMO for a president's job.
Speaker 3: And I should go for it. I should try and
Speaker 3: grab this breast ring this guy from you know, but
Speaker 3: for the grace of God. You know, my father was
Speaker 3: a typewriter repair man into an executive. But for the
Speaker 3: grace of God, I'd be walking a beat somewhere. You know,
Speaker 3: President me, Let's give it.
Speaker 2: A whirl a little bit slower. You get an email
Speaker 2: or the phone ring as they say, what and how
Speaker 2: do you ultimately decide to take the job.
Speaker 3: Well, it was a similar experience to CROCS. So now
Speaker 3: I knew when I joined CROCS it did not have
Speaker 3: an awareness problem, had a relevance opportunity. Stanley had an
Speaker 3: awareness opportunity. It's a you know, one hundred year old brand,
Speaker 3: just known for quality, known for this green bottle that
Speaker 3: people love. It's been in you know, it's probably somewhere
Speaker 3: in you know, Connecticut or you know where you grew
Speaker 3: up in somebody's attic, somebody's garage, and most people didn't
Speaker 3: even know it. It was like, oh, yeah, that that''s
Speaker 3: that green bottle that my dad used to have. Well,
Speaker 3: my mom she took it to school every day where
Speaker 3: her soup. She was a teacher back in the sixties
Speaker 3: or so. All right, wait a minute, this is a
Speaker 3: there's a heritage here. How cool is that to get
Speaker 3: the keys to that kind of thing. So if we
Speaker 3: can make it relevant and increase the awareness, we might
Speaker 3: be able to do something. And this might be a
Speaker 3: really interesting president's job, which I shouldn't have no business having.
Speaker 2: How did they find you?
Speaker 3: I think as yeah, it was a search firm, you know,
Speaker 3: because I started to get a little attention for the
Speaker 3: Crux success. You know, undeserved attention. But you know, it's
Speaker 3: like a quarterback. You get the attention, you get the blame.
Speaker 3: And so people started to see what was happening at CROCS,
Speaker 3: and my name was, you know, somewhat attached to it.
Speaker 3: And so I was getting lots of calls for other
Speaker 3: CMO jobs and all things like that, President mat you know,
Speaker 3: so I thought I was going to be Governor Corleone,
Speaker 3: President Corloni. Yeah, so let's go for it, and that
Speaker 3: it turned out. I decided to do it in February
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: Uh oh, okay, just to stay on this, ay, where
Speaker 5: is Stanley located?
Speaker 2: B how much revenue in a year?
Speaker 3: So Stanley's based in Seattle, Washington. And when I joined,
Speaker 3: Stanley was a seventy million dollar brand known for the
Speaker 3: Hammertone Green bottle. That's an American classic. You know, if
Speaker 3: you watch the Festivut episode of Seinfeld, Kramer's got it
Speaker 3: in his pocket. If you've watched Off the Space when
Speaker 3: they keep moving Milton and his Stapler, he's got his Stanley.
Speaker 3: The Hammertone Green is bedrock and helped build America.
Speaker 2: Okay, a couple other questions, FIRA, way, what other products
Speaker 2: does Stanley have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lunchboxes, different drinkwear, specializing in drinkwear and lunchboxes, and
Speaker 3: then outdoor camping gear. You know how many you know,
Speaker 3: meals were made around the fire in the outdoor with
Speaker 3: Stanley over the last you know, seventy five hundred years.
Speaker 3: Is part again of American heritage and tradition. So so
Speaker 3: I know that that exists and quality. It's known for
Speaker 3: just quality and a real rabid core fan base is
Speaker 3: almost the wrong word, you know, just and advocates and
Speaker 3: just lovers of the brand. And it almost like a
Speaker 3: family heirloom and an inheritance. My dad was a Stanley man,
Speaker 3: my mom was a Stanley woman. That kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you get the job. You're living in Colorado.
Speaker 2: The companies in Seattle, it's February of twenty twenty. Yeah,
Speaker 2: do they say you have to move? What happens on
Speaker 2: that level? And obviously it's the beginning of COVID.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so was planning on moving to Seattle, had a
Speaker 3: place downtown ready to roll. And then March or twenty
Speaker 3: twenty hits and this is I accepted in right before
Speaker 3: COVID and then COVID hits and I join first week
Speaker 3: in April. And my first reaction is what did I
Speaker 3: just do to my life? This high flying? I'm not
Speaker 3: high flying at all, Bob, I'm a CMO that's had
Speaker 3: some success at CROCS. What did I just do to
Speaker 3: my life? There is no office to go to, Seattle
Speaker 3: is closed. You got to remember, like in twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: none of us were on teams or we're just zoom
Speaker 3: like it was occasionally, And so what did I just
Speaker 3: do to my career? To my life? But you know,
Speaker 3: I made a decision. We're in it and back to listening.
Speaker 3: So one of the things that you do when you're
Speaker 3: a new leader I hope people do, is you listen
Speaker 3: to your team what should we stop? Start and continue?
Speaker 3: And on a Friday afternoon, I check in with Lauren Solomon,
Speaker 3: who is one of Stanley's brilliant saleswomen, and I asked
Speaker 3: that question, wh should we stop, start and continue? And
Speaker 3: I've listened to lots of people, and Lauren says, there
Speaker 3: are these three women in Utah that she has become
Speaker 3: aware of that have been actually buying this forty ounce
Speaker 3: adventure tumbler of ours and selling it on their own
Speaker 3: and they're seeing some success. So my CROCS instincts immediately crackle. Okay,
Speaker 3: wait what is this? Who are these? And she tells
Speaker 3: me about these three women who call themselves the buy
Speaker 3: Guide out in Utah and that they had taken a
Speaker 3: liking to this quencher, and so the team immediately starts to.
Speaker 2: Do it, just because we're going back there, firewing. How
Speaker 2: many were they buy.
Speaker 3: Hundreds on their own dime and they were taking the risk,
Speaker 3: and so they were seeing success. And so they had
Speaker 3: their own following of a few, you know, million or
Speaker 3: so followers on the by Guide, and we're telling their
Speaker 3: followers how much they loved this product. And so, again
Speaker 3: back to what I had just done at CROCS, I
Speaker 3: recognize this pattern thanks to Lauren pointing it out and
Speaker 3: the risks that the buy Guide were taking on their
Speaker 3: own before I showed up. But this is this is
Speaker 3: gold dust to me. And so we make an arrangement
Speaker 3: with the buy Guide to have them further evangelize this product,
Speaker 3: and then with them we started to create new colors.
Speaker 2: What does that look like? Further evangelize the product?
Speaker 3: Oh, to get really behind and get paid for it
Speaker 3: instead of taking the risk getting compensated for the bet
Speaker 3: that they had already made on this little product on
Speaker 3: their own and help us start something. And that's how
Speaker 3: it works. That's social media in a nutshell. And so
Speaker 3: we started to sell a few thousand and then lots
Speaker 3: of thousands, all on Stanley nineteen thirteen dot com. And
Speaker 3: so certainly the margins are great. They're getting they're getting
Speaker 3: a taste, as we would say back in New Jersey,
Speaker 3: and we got ourselves a little hit. And then we
Speaker 3: started to introduce a new another new color or two.
Speaker 3: And then with this, armed with this data, we could
Speaker 3: go to some of our key accounts that were just
Speaker 3: carrying the traditional Stanley's. So we're seeing this unlocked with
Speaker 3: young women. You should give us two feet of shelf space,
Speaker 3: and they did, and that two feet became six feet,
Speaker 3: became eight feet, which became an entire corner of Dick
Speaker 3: sporting goods and the cultural phenomenon that became the Stanley Quencher.
Speaker 3: I was born exactly like I described it, more or less,
Speaker 3: and new colors, new surprises, new collaborations, and what the
Speaker 3: crux experience that I had. I know how to do
Speaker 3: some of this stuff. I know how this should work.
Speaker 3: And we got after collaborations that also changed the entire
Speaker 3: you know, complexion of the brand.
Speaker 2: Okay, a little bit more granular. You're having this reaction
Speaker 2: from the Women in Utah. You're selling on the website.
Speaker 2: You go to Dick's give us a chance than.
Speaker 3: What we gave, point to lots of places to say,
Speaker 3: give us a bigger chance. But we had the math,
Speaker 3: you know, thanks to our team, thanks to Matt and
Speaker 3: Helen and others. They were carefully managing these relationships to
Speaker 3: start to grow it out. But we had the data
Speaker 3: and so that was another part of the magic. It
Speaker 3: was all happening on heydude dot com and now we
Speaker 3: can share it. So it was a safer bet for
Speaker 3: these big retailers to start to take a chance on us,
Speaker 3: and for some of these brands, and for Stanley, for everybody.
Speaker 3: It's been one of the biggest success stories of this century.
Speaker 2: Uh oh, okay, you got the Women in Utah. Now
Speaker 2: you're selling on the website. You have these accounts Dix
Speaker 2: and other plane what is driving adoption? What is driving sales?
Speaker 3: Well, shelf space for one, and then the use of
Speaker 3: social media. The buy Guide in particular, starts to get
Speaker 3: us started in the influencer and affiliate game where we
Speaker 3: could work with other beyond the buy Guide, affiliates and
Speaker 3: influencers to start to evangelize this product. And it also
Speaker 3: starts the fact that it's an incredible product. I mean
Speaker 3: it starts there. It serves so many purposes, but then
Speaker 3: it just becomes a cultural phenomenon through our use of
Speaker 3: social media to evangelize it. There was no TV, there
Speaker 3: was no radio, There was hardly any traditional marketing behind
Speaker 3: the Stanley product. It was all through influencers and affiliates
Speaker 3: and women. And like I said earlier, women create community.
Speaker 3: They decide what is cool, and they chose authentically the
Speaker 3: Stanley Quencher, and off it went. And then we would
Speaker 3: certainly fan the flames with new colors, new accessories, new partnerships.
Speaker 3: I was on TikTok back to not turning the television
Speaker 3: on anymore. I was scrolling through TikTok one afternoon and
Speaker 3: video crossed my for you page of a young artist
Speaker 3: singing to a pretty sizable audience, and the video was
Speaker 3: taken from behind her, behind the stage. And let's just
Speaker 3: say the video made its rounds because of this artist's
Speaker 3: rather ample backside, And so I then saw a video
Speaker 3: of this artist commenting on that video and she referred
Speaker 3: to her backside as her dump truck. I was like,
Speaker 3: who is this woman? Like, she's so first of all,
Speaker 3: she's beautiful, second of all, she's just cool and is
Speaker 3: own this and take ownership of this kind of misogynistic
Speaker 3: leering video that was on TikTok And wow, who is
Speaker 3: this woman? So I saw her name and my next
Speaker 3: move is I go to Spotify and I find her.
Speaker 3: On Spotify, I find her latest release. I go down
Speaker 3: the track listing and I see one of the tracks
Speaker 3: is called Watermelon Moonshine. And with my eyeball, bob, Watermelon
Speaker 3: Moonshine is a Stanley Quencher color. So I write Ellen
Speaker 3: on our team, on our product team, I said, hey,
Speaker 3: can you please create a watermelon moonshine color Quencher. You
Speaker 3: can't be wrong, And within two days she fires me
Speaker 3: back a cad of a watermelon Moonshine Quencher. And I
Speaker 3: reach out to this artist's label on LinkedIn. I connect
Speaker 3: with Donna McQueen and I said, hey, would you be
Speaker 3: interested in a Stanley Laney Wilson collaboration because what do
Speaker 3: you have in mind, and I said, how about watermelon moonshine,
Speaker 3: and off we went, sold out twice in less than
Speaker 3: two minutes, and the unboxing videos of Laney Wilson watermelon
Speaker 3: Moonshine quenchers were everywhere in twenty twenty two. So it's
Speaker 3: these kind of things that just continued to ignite it.
Speaker 3: And then lots of other artists and brand collaborations from
Speaker 3: love Shack Fancy to Wicked, to Olivia Rodrigo to too
Speaker 3: many to count, all similar to Crocs wanted their own
Speaker 3: Stanley quencher. And then we were parodied on Saturday Night Live,
Speaker 3: and then there are riots and target over the latest release,
Speaker 3: and then it's all over the world. And then of
Speaker 3: course there's the fire response video that I made that
Speaker 3: people write about still every single day, which was back
Speaker 3: to TikTok, my adoption of TikTok personally and moving fast.
Speaker 2: Tell that story because not everybody's familiar with it.
Speaker 3: So one Wednesday afternoon, I forwarded by somebody on our
Speaker 3: team a TikTok video of a woman who's car caught
Speaker 3: on fire, and she shows the camera her car's caught
Speaker 3: on fire, and in the couple is her Stanley and
Speaker 3: she pulls it out of the cup holder and shakes
Speaker 3: it and it still has ice in it after a
Speaker 3: car fire. So somebody sent that video to me on
Speaker 3: a Wednesday, and Wednesday night I wrote the team and
Speaker 3: said I'm going to buy her a car. I we
Speaker 3: and the next morning, Thursday morning, I roll into the
Speaker 3: office in Seattle, and I asked Chloe, one of our
Speaker 3: young marketing associates, to get the phone that has our
Speaker 3: TikTok account on it. You know, we have a Stanley
Speaker 3: phone at the time. It's not my phone. Said bring
Speaker 3: it into the boardroom with me and merchandise some products
Speaker 3: behind me. And I said, hold the phone up like
Speaker 3: it's a selfie. And I said what I said live,
Speaker 3: no scripts, no briefings, no nonsense. It was just what
Speaker 3: I think anybody would have done if they happened to
Speaker 3: be the president of the brand. That this woman has
Speaker 3: featured our product in the most heroic way a car
Speaker 3: fire and there's still ice in the Stanley. And I respond,
Speaker 3: I don't remember exactly what I said anymore, but Danielle,
Speaker 3: I hope you're safe. Thanks for showing the product in
Speaker 3: such a wonderful manner. People keep writing that we should
Speaker 3: buy you some new Stanley's. Well, we're certainly going to
Speaker 3: buy you some new Stanleys, but we also want to
Speaker 3: replace your vehicle. And I had to Chloe press send.
Speaker 3: She said, are you sure? Said yes, and she pressed send,
Speaker 3: and then it was like a movie. I went back
Speaker 3: around my day. But then people started texting me Tea,
Speaker 3: you know, you're blowing up on TikTok. No, my daughter, Dad,
Speaker 3: you know, like you're blowing up on TikTok and Bob.
Speaker 3: One hundred million views later, people know that video. They've
Speaker 3: seen it too many times to count in too many languages,
Speaker 3: languages I don't even recognize. Well stopped in airports from people,
Speaker 3: and it solidified the quality of the product. That's what
Speaker 3: it was about, and taking care of a consumer who
Speaker 3: we care about. And she was a fan of ours,
Speaker 3: and I like to think anybody would have done that.
Speaker 3: I just did it the next day, and I just
Speaker 3: did it. I didn't script it. I just said it.
Speaker 3: And maybe that's why I connected, which is what I
Speaker 3: said earlier. It's authentic, genuine and fast and off it went,
Speaker 3: and it helped change the complexion of a brand that
Speaker 3: was already winning.
Speaker 2: Okay, how did you get her the money, how did
Speaker 2: she buy the car and what car did she get?
Speaker 3: So we got in touch with her obviously through TikTok,
Speaker 3: because she'd seen the response, of course and was blown
Speaker 3: away by the response. And we just got in touch
Speaker 3: with her and we asked her what car she wanted
Speaker 3: and she told us, I can't remember what. We got
Speaker 3: her a Mazda, a Mazda something, and we contacted the
Speaker 3: local dealer where she lived in the Washington, d C.
Speaker 3: Maryland area, and we told the dealership we want to
Speaker 3: buy it. Let's take care of it all and put
Speaker 3: the big red ribbon on it and bring it to her.
Speaker 3: And we did that within four to six weeks of
Speaker 3: that first video and delivered on our promise, my promise,
Speaker 3: and really, you know, solidify the quality of the brand
Speaker 3: where that video is still shown every single day. I
Speaker 3: had a funny story. One of my best friend Sons
Speaker 3: is a sophomore at Elon in North Carolina, and he
Speaker 3: texted me a photo of me on his classroom screen
Speaker 3: that were talking about marketing, you know moments, and like,
Speaker 3: you know, Terrence, they're talking about you in my class
Speaker 3: So that's cool. So it's just it's continually talked about
Speaker 3: is like a smart marketing move, and it was just
Speaker 3: a real thing. It wasn't of course, it was marketing.
Speaker 3: I'm not stupid. People aren't stupid. But it was just
Speaker 3: a real reaction to something. And you see opportunity for
Speaker 3: your brand when it's reinforcing your quality and taking care
Speaker 3: of a customer.
Speaker 2: Okay, so the change in sales dollar wise for the
Speaker 2: Stanley Cup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So, as I said earlier, when I joined in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty, Stanley was a seventy million dollar business and
Speaker 3: as you know, we reported at the end of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty four we were seven hundred and fifty million, so
Speaker 3: you know, ten x in four years, and I'm sure
Speaker 3: those numbers continued in twenty twenty five, so seventy to
Speaker 3: seven hundred and fifty million in four years. But beyond
Speaker 3: the dollars, it's the you know what, people don't even
Speaker 3: know how many times throughout my tenure there and even
Speaker 3: to this day, people just refer to it as a Stanley,
Speaker 3: like do you know, like the how amazing that is
Speaker 3: that people refer to it as like Q tip or
Speaker 3: Kleenex or z it's the Stanley Like that is the
Speaker 3: that's the case study and all the things that we
Speaker 3: did as a team to do that. Why know me,
Speaker 3: It wasn't me, It was all of us at Stanley.
Speaker 3: I made some big decisions, hired some great people that
Speaker 3: ran with things and made it better. But the fact
Speaker 3: that it's just known around the world and it's known
Speaker 3: in silhouette as a Stanley that is an incredible thing
Speaker 3: to have been a part of. And what I shake
Speaker 3: my head in disbelief no matter where I go, Bob.
Speaker 3: Like I was at a college campus giving a little
Speaker 3: presentation a couple of months ago, and walking around the
Speaker 3: campus before my presentation, I saw nine Stanley's, six pair
Speaker 3: of crocs and four hey dudes, And I started my
Speaker 3: presentation saying, what's nine plus six plus four? And all
Speaker 3: these eager college students raised their hand to yell out
Speaker 3: nineteen like really really, like now that's my career history
Speaker 3: on your campus right this morning I saw nine Crocs,
Speaker 3: six stand or whatever, and and do you want to
Speaker 3: know how it happened? And that kind of story.
Speaker 2: So, so how about the other Stanley products?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, the rising tide lifts all boats, right, so
Speaker 3: you know, Stanley became some of the fun stuff was
Speaker 3: seeing dads who have their green Stanley convincing their daughters
Speaker 3: on TikTok that these daughters like, Dad, I need to Stanley.
Speaker 3: This is new, this new company is new, and it's like, sweetie,
Speaker 3: like I've had this Stanley for forty years, or this
Speaker 3: was your grandfather's Wait no it wasn't, dad like those
Speaker 3: kind of fun things to enhance the brand, and then
Speaker 3: new product introductions back to build the core and add more.
Speaker 3: In this case, we did it a little bit differently.
Speaker 3: We started from the outer and worked in to increase
Speaker 3: all the different categories that Stanley had and it's incredible
Speaker 3: success story beyond just the Quencher, but the Quencher is
Speaker 3: a global phenomenon that is a real incredible thing that
Speaker 3: the team did.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're no longer there, although you're there for a while.
Speaker 2: How do you prevent it from being a fad?
Speaker 3: By introducing newness, by continuing to surprise and delight with
Speaker 3: new collaborations with new colors, materials, finishes, accessories, all of
Speaker 3: those ways, and then great merchandising too, you know, and
Speaker 3: with you know, great partners who are giving you shelf space.
Speaker 3: For two to really give authenticity and you know, so
Speaker 3: many brands, so many consumers look for their retailers to
Speaker 3: give them the to be the editor right of this
Speaker 3: is what's cool, this is what they should have. And
Speaker 3: when you've got that incredible shelf space, you want to
Speaker 3: continue to innovate around it and build scarcity. That was
Speaker 3: the other thing that we did really really well at
Speaker 3: Stanley and Crocs. What I learned at Crocs. You know,
Speaker 3: the reason why the post malone sold out in a
Speaker 3: second is because there weren't a lot of them. And
Speaker 3: people want what they cannot have. And so the more
Speaker 3: you do that, you don't want to frustrate that could
Speaker 3: happen to but you want to people want what they
Speaker 3: cannot have, and so when you balance that really well,
Speaker 3: it extends things. But also it has to be a
Speaker 3: great product. Crocs are a great product. Stanley is a
Speaker 3: great product. Hey dude, it's a great product. So fads
Speaker 3: come and go. Great products stand the test of time.
Speaker 2: Okay, So you have this great success with a quench
Speaker 2: and you are aware of scarcity works for you, how
Speaker 2: do you decide how many to make and where to
Speaker 2: put them?
Speaker 3: A little bit of feel, a little bit of Instagram followers,
Speaker 3: a little bit of sign ups for to be notified
Speaker 3: of the next launch of things. So all of that
Speaker 3: goes into the calculus of how many you want to create.
Speaker 3: And again, if we're working with artists, we do a
Speaker 3: little bit of Instagram follower math, but we we want
Speaker 3: to typically you know, sell out, you know, that's what
Speaker 3: keeps the fire going. We want to put a cap
Speaker 3: on it, and we always did, certainly while I was there.
Speaker 2: What's the best way to introduce splash make people aware
Speaker 2: that there's one of these new limited products social media.
Speaker 3: Certainly, if it's an artist, they're going to tell their fans,
Speaker 3: you know, Landy Wilson, Hey, y'all, well, my new watermelon
Speaker 3: moonshine is dropping and her fans devour that, as do
Speaker 3: the artists and brand choices that the brands choose to
Speaker 3: work with. So it's certainly social Obviously, email notification and
Speaker 3: you know, sending an announcement or an invitation to our
Speaker 3: guest lists of who is following the brand. And then
Speaker 3: obviously in store, some of our target launches caused complete
Speaker 3: and total chaos and target stores where certainly towards the
Speaker 3: end of my tenure, maybe still today, I don't know,
Speaker 3: you know, there was a two limit, you know, two
Speaker 3: quencher limit that you could purchase, so that caused an
Speaker 3: additional frenzy and in some cases some really terrible behavior
Speaker 3: from customers. And with the iPhone, you know, those things
Speaker 3: get on video and those are all over the news,
Speaker 3: and that doesn't really hurt a brand. It shows the frenzy,
Speaker 3: but it's not something that you're after. You don't want
Speaker 3: anybody get hurt and you're not looking for that. It's
Speaker 3: just the Sometimes it brings out the worst in people.
Speaker 2: So you have all the success at Crocs in Stanley,
Speaker 2: to what degree did these companies do corporate publicity?
Speaker 3: Very little, very little? You know, Crocs then and now
Speaker 3: is a very humble brand, despite an incredible track record
Speaker 3: from you know, decades long track record of success and
Speaker 3: global success. Hey dude, we I'm sorry Stanley.
Speaker 2: We did one.
Speaker 3: CNBC piece where they came out to interview me and
Speaker 3: some colleagues in Seattle, and but not too much you
Speaker 3: know press, you know, a couple of articles from the
Speaker 3: President to talk about the brand, but it was by
Speaker 3: and large consumer consumer press, entertainment press, culture press that
Speaker 3: helped continue to fan the flames.
Speaker 2: Okay, did you have a PR person or was it
Speaker 2: all organic?
Speaker 3: All the above, all the above, terrific PR person who
Speaker 3: managed those things, and then some of the PR was
Speaker 3: just organic, you know. And the car fire spawned lots
Speaker 3: of articles, and the frenzy caused lots of articles, and
Speaker 3: not all of them were good. There was one article
Speaker 3: I remember reading that, you know, some of the frenzy
Speaker 3: that was occurring was you know, it's not the best
Speaker 3: of human behavior, and people were blaming me for it
Speaker 3: by name like, well, you're all fast something like I'm
Speaker 3: paraphrasing it. But while we're all quick to blame all
Speaker 3: the women who are beating each other up and pulling
Speaker 3: hair at Target, shouldn't we really be blaming Terrence Riley?
Speaker 3: Like you know, these kind of things start to, you know,
Speaker 3: creep into your life.
Speaker 2: Okay, just to stay there. Yeah, did you respond?
Speaker 3: Never? No? No, no, no, no.
Speaker 2: I mean I know that from my own life. You
Speaker 2: never respond. That's their goal. But did you know that
Speaker 2: because your knowledge of social media that you don't respond.
Speaker 3: No, just instinct or you know, you know, what's have
Speaker 3: you ever seen a movie Chef with Jon Favreau and uh,
Speaker 3: what's his name? The reporter at theater goes, I buy
Speaker 3: ink by the barrel, buddy, Like, you're not gonna you know,
Speaker 3: you're not gonna win that. In fact, the car fire video,
Speaker 3: you know that the PR folks and the PR agencies
Speaker 3: and all the PR pundits were saying, like, you got
Speaker 3: to make a big deal out of giving her the car.
Speaker 3: And you know, we were invited on the Today Show
Speaker 3: or Good Morning America one of those things, and listen like,
Speaker 3: I'm of the same ego as any of us, Like, hey,
Speaker 3: to go on the Today Show as a marketer or
Speaker 3: Good Morning or whatever. It was, yeah, like that's of course,
Speaker 3: that's it's not that you're suppose to do that, but it
Speaker 3: kind of would have ruined it. Like my response was
Speaker 3: just real, it was just me. I happened to be
Speaker 3: the president. But it wasn't some focus group, let's talk
Speaker 3: to a bunch of people and get a lot of
Speaker 3: points of view. It was just me. The next morning,
Speaker 3: most people didn't even know I did it. And so
Speaker 3: then hey, let's give her the car on the Today
Speaker 3: Show and do that whole thing. And I wanted to,
Speaker 3: but it was my mother. I told her, I said, hey,
Speaker 3: we're going on Today Show and my mom said, don't
Speaker 3: do that. I said, why your son? You know, I
Speaker 3: want to make you proud. Mom, your son's on the
Speaker 3: Today Show. She goes, don't do it, and she was right.
Speaker 2: Well, she said don't do it. Why did she say
Speaker 2: not to do it?
Speaker 3: Because she knew it would it would ruin it because
Speaker 3: it was real and it was real, and so if
Speaker 3: we started to put a shine on it and started
Speaker 3: to catch our own bouquets, it just wouldn't It wouldn't
Speaker 3: have been right, you know. And so she grew up
Speaker 3: in the Bronx. She's as real as it gets. She
Speaker 3: was right. So always listen to your mother.
Speaker 2: Okay, you had this incredible success. Were you compensated accordingly? Sure?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Did all right? Okay, so then maybe you say,
Speaker 2: instead of getting a new job, I'm not gonna work again.
Speaker 3: My parents are from the Bronx. My father fixed typewriters
Speaker 3: in a suit in the sixties seventies. That's not what
Speaker 3: you do. So it's not about the money. I made
Speaker 3: more money than I'd ever thought i'd make in my life.
Speaker 3: Like I did, I did well, you know, I think
Speaker 3: my guidance counselor in high school told my parents I'd
Speaker 3: been underachiever. It's not about that. It's never been about that.
Speaker 3: I can't believe I'm in the spot, Bob. I can't
Speaker 3: believe I'm talking to you. I'm actually wondering what the
Speaker 3: hell makes me interesting that you'd have me on your
Speaker 3: podcast when I see your guest list. But I've somehow,
Speaker 3: with your great teams, connected with culture more than once.
Speaker 3: You know, you walk down the street, you're going to
Speaker 3: see people wearing crocs, carrying Stanley's and wearing hay Dudes.
Speaker 3: And I had a little something to do with all
Speaker 3: of that, and so that's a pretty cool thing. So now, hey, dude,
Speaker 3: is this eight hundred million dollar company that most people
Speaker 3: don't know about, Like, we could make hay Do the
Speaker 3: leading casual footwear brand in the world. Why not us?
Speaker 3: That's worth a shot, and I'm taking it. And I
Speaker 3: could have stayed selling a lot of Quenchers. Okay, you
Speaker 3: just expressed a level of confidence in yourself, and you
Speaker 3: talked about not having confidence in the high school. What
Speaker 3: triggered the confidence? No, I don't think I have any confidence.
Speaker 3: I'm just confident that with a great team we could
Speaker 3: turn hate dude into one of the leading casual footwear
Speaker 3: brands in the world because it's open space. Who is
Speaker 3: the leading casual footwear brand in the world. If I
Speaker 3: ask ten people, I get ten different answers, all great companies,
Speaker 3: and so why not, hay dude, because we're a great
Speaker 3: little product. And so that's the thrill of it. It's
Speaker 3: back to what's around the corner, that insatiable curiosity and
Speaker 3: the unmistakable sense of what's possible. This might be possible,
Speaker 3: and so I should try it.
Speaker 2: Okay, but let's let's go back. How did you decide
Speaker 2: to leave Stanley in addition not having the president's titlely
Speaker 2: your new role?
Speaker 3: Well, I am the president of Hey dude, Oh you are?
Speaker 3: I am? Yes, so ali of miss No, that's okay.
Speaker 3: So CROCS has a brilliant CEO for many many years.
Speaker 3: He was the one that gave me the CMO job
Speaker 3: at CrOx and he's still there. Anderye is an absolute
Speaker 3: brilliant man, highest of integrity. And Crocs. The president of
Speaker 3: CrOx is Ann Melman, who's equally talented. She used to
Speaker 3: be the CFO of CrOx and now hey dude, I'm
Speaker 3: the new president of Hey dude. So two presidents of
Speaker 3: two brands reporting into the CEO of Crocs, and it
Speaker 3: was just an exciting opportunity to again get the keys
Speaker 3: to an eight hundred plus million dollar footwear brand. Who
Speaker 3: gets that in life it shouldn't be me in my head,
Speaker 3: but somebody believes in me and is believed in me before.
Speaker 3: So driver like you Stole It, Bob. One of my
Speaker 3: favorite movies of the recent era is sing Street and
Speaker 3: driver It like You Stole It is one of the
Speaker 3: songs in singh Street. So somebody threw me the keys
Speaker 3: like they have before, and I'm going to drive it
Speaker 3: like I stole it and encourage our teams to do
Speaker 3: the same thing because it's possible. And I've just happened
Speaker 3: to be to live that more than once.
Speaker 2: Okay, you're at Stanley, you're having this great success. How
Speaker 2: does this opportunity come on your radar? And how hard
Speaker 2: of his decision is it to leave?
Speaker 3: Well, the CEO of Crocs were hired me once before
Speaker 3: as the CMO. So I got a call say, hey,
Speaker 3: would you be interested in coming back? And I was
Speaker 3: you know you're a skier, right Bob?
Speaker 2: And oh yeah, you know.
Speaker 3: What happens when you get to the top of the mountain.
Speaker 3: He turned back down and I got to the top
Speaker 3: of the mountain at Stanley, my mountain at least, and
Speaker 3: I believe there's certainly maybe a couple of a couple
Speaker 3: more feet first Stanley to climb, but then more at
Speaker 3: Stanley than anybody dreamed possible, certainly more than I dream possible,
Speaker 3: although I dream big. This is a whole other level
Speaker 3: of So give the keys to Matt Navarro, the guy
Speaker 3: who I had the good fortune to hire, helped me
Speaker 3: build Stanley, and now he's the new president of Stanley.
Speaker 3: It doesn't get better than that. When I was a
Speaker 3: CMO of CROCS, I hired Heidi Cooley, and when I
Speaker 3: left CROCS, she took over a CMO and what she's
Speaker 3: done with Crocs's more than I ever did with Crocs.
Speaker 3: So like this, these are gifts that I've been given,
Speaker 3: and I think I've passed it on a little bit.
Speaker 3: And both of these brands will flourish thanks to other
Speaker 3: great leaders that I happen to bring on board. And boy,
Speaker 3: that's a pretty cool little coaching tree to borrow football parlance.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you have this great success and it's a
Speaker 2: public success. Did other offers come down the pike?
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, okay, Yeah, a lot of people called, but
Speaker 3: it just wasn't right. There's it wasn't right. You know.
Speaker 3: I think what you want to bring, like you want
Speaker 3: to win the Super Bowl with the Browns, you know,
Speaker 3: you want to win the Super Bowl with the Lions
Speaker 3: or the Bills or the Vikings. Right. A lot of
Speaker 3: the brands that were calling just they were already successful.
Speaker 3: They were already They didn't need that, and I wouldn't
Speaker 3: get no satisfaction out of that. Hey, dude's also really successful,
Speaker 3: but there's more to go get and there's a lot
Speaker 3: of people that don't know about it. And now that's
Speaker 3: my job with a great team to fix it. That's stuff.
Speaker 3: And if we can do that and we already are,
Speaker 3: that's like bringing the Browns or the Lions or you know,
Speaker 3: to the super Bowl, and that's what you want, right, Okay.
Speaker 2: When Jeffrey Katzenberg was number two at Disney, the expression was,
Speaker 2: if you don't come in on Saturday, don't even think
Speaker 2: about coming in on Sunday. So are you the type
Speaker 2: of person who's essentially working around the clock, And is
Speaker 2: that what it's required.
Speaker 3: I don't have an off button, but I do not
Speaker 3: expect that from anyone. I rarely emails on the weekends. Rarely,
Speaker 3: I mean once every two or three months, that kind
Speaker 3: of rare. I'm always on and I'm always looking for
Speaker 3: the connections that can ignite a brand. And see Landy Wilson,
Speaker 3: see Luke Combe, see all of the car fires, see
Speaker 3: all that. So my antenna is always up. But that's
Speaker 3: just a personal wiring. I'm highly competitive. I want to
Speaker 3: win at part cheesy if that still exists, and I
Speaker 3: also want to win on the peloton. I want to win.
Speaker 3: So I don't know where that competitive fire started to happen.
Speaker 3: And I'm not always going to win. And I don't
Speaker 3: win everything, not even close, you know. But I try
Speaker 3: and be the best that I can be as often
Speaker 3: as possible, and it's somehow kind of worked.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what is your favorite Springsteen album?
Speaker 3: Oh? You went albums? Uh favorite Springsteen album is The River?
Speaker 2: Okay, Well you said albums, so then you were well
Speaker 2: you thought I was gonna ask tracks.
Speaker 3: Oh I didn't know what you're gonna ask me. I
Speaker 3: just wanted to. I'm from New Jersey, so it's the law.
Speaker 3: So my favorite Bruce song would have to be Frankie,
Speaker 3: but nobody knows that one. And so the one I
Speaker 3: listened to the most to get fired up is Growing
Speaker 3: Up Live off of seventy five eighty five, the live version,
Speaker 3: because it's.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know, certainly know the song. My favorite,
Speaker 2: my what I used to get fired up was Candy's
Speaker 2: Room of course off Darkness. So did you see the
Speaker 2: River tour a few years ago when he redid it?
Speaker 3: I did? I did. I've seen him on every tour since.
Speaker 3: Born in the USA. That's when you know again, as
Speaker 3: an eighteen year old in New Jersey in nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: four eighty five, you know, you talk about a local hero.
Speaker 3: And I've been chasing that ever since. I've seen Bruce
Speaker 3: more than seven times and five different countries, and I'm
Speaker 3: one of those guys.
Speaker 2: But it's.
Speaker 3: It's chasing something that hit me. It got into my veins.
Speaker 3: August nineteenth, nineteen eighty five, was the first concert I
Speaker 3: ever went to of anybody, and it was Bruce at
Speaker 3: Giant Stadium. And what I've been chasing Bob is, they say,
Speaker 3: certainly the music and his performance and the band in
Speaker 3: the street band, But the moment when the house lights
Speaker 3: go down is my favorite moment in life. And time
Speaker 3: stands still for those twenty thirty seconds when the lights
Speaker 3: go You've been waiting for it, right and the lights
Speaker 3: go down, and there's the roar of the crowd, and
Speaker 3: then the band comes out one by one and it's happening,
Speaker 3: but it hasn't happened yet, and time stands still in
Speaker 3: this space. And then he comes out out last, and
Speaker 3: he comes to the mic and he counts off, and
Speaker 3: the minute he starts counting off, it's over because it
Speaker 3: it's now, it's it's ending, it's and that time stands
Speaker 3: still in those precious twenty to thirty seconds whatever it
Speaker 3: is between the house lights and him coming up to
Speaker 3: the mic and usually counting off as we know he does.
Speaker 3: And that is why I've seen him seventy five times.
Speaker 3: Time stands still. And if you can make time stand still,
Speaker 3: that's a pretty cool magic act.
Speaker 2: So have you sent Bruce A Stanley the Dudes or pro?
Speaker 3: I have not. I have not. I came close once
Speaker 3: to sending little Stephen a Purple Stanley because he just
Speaker 3: has that, you know, aesthetic in his personal life but
Speaker 3: I just know.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's one thing to send it and
Speaker 2: literally not ask for anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I just I don't know, I have not I've
Speaker 3: thought about it more than once. But it's uh, you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes you just want to keep your heroes and all
Speaker 3: that at Bay. It's kind of still Listen. I'm fifty
Speaker 3: eight years old. I first saw Bruce and you know
Speaker 3: when I was eighteen, I kind of want to keep
Speaker 3: all that at Bay because it's still that fantasy world
Speaker 3: and it uh yeah, it's so it's chasing and it
Speaker 3: never would have happened.
Speaker 2: Well, generally speaking, you don't want to meet your heroes. Yeah,
Speaker 2: very few, very few of them. Some of them do
Speaker 2: live up to the rep but the something that you
Speaker 2: believe in most absolutely do not, and it's really disillusion
Speaker 2: can't listen to their music for a while. In any event, Terrence,
Speaker 2: I want to thank you so much for telling us
Speaker 2: your story telling and informing my audience and what's going
Speaker 2: on in career wise with these products. Thanks again, Thank
Speaker 2: you Tears. Next step this is Bob Left stock
Speaker 3: Sh