Podcast appearances and mentions of randy goldberg

David Heath and Randy Goldberg saw an opportunity to disrupt a long dormant—and arguably boring sector...socks. They met at a startup in their 20s, each already had their own side hustles before they hatched a plan to launch a business together. Randy and David didn't initially intend to get into the sock business, but in 2011, David read that socks are the most requested clothing item at homeless shelters. That led them to start a company they called Bombas based on a promise: for each pair of socks a customer bought, another would be donated to the homeless. Within about ten years, their one-for-one start-up turned into a quarter of a billion dollar business that has expanded into sweatshirts, underwear, and t-shirts.This episode was produced by Kerry Thompson with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Andrea Bruce. You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram, and email us at hibt@id.wondery.com. And sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

David Heath and Randy Goldberg, co-founders of Bombas, join host Jeff Berman to reveal how they scaled their mission-driven apparel company. Bombas donates one item for every one sold, and has given away more than 140 million pairs of socks, underwear and shirts so far to people in need. They recount how the Shark Tank rollercoaster affected their business, why sometimes you have to ignore well-intentioned advice, and what their nationwide network of community partners has taught them about how to combat homelessness.Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale.comSubscribe to the Masters of Scale weekly newsletter: https://mastersofscale.com/subscribeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bombas co-founder and Chief Brand Officer Randy Goldberg joins Guy on the Advice Line, where they answer questions from three early-stage founders about building brands and reaching new communities.Today we meet Rivky, an Orthodox Jewish woman who's redefining modest clothing for plus-size women. Then Shyam, a rocket engineer who wants to introduce Americans to a popular South Asian tabletop game. And Änna, a boutique owner who wants to translate her hip brick-and-mortar vibes into the digital space.If you'd like to be featured on a future Advice Line episode, leave us a one minute message that tells us about your business and a specific question you'd like answered. Send a voice memo to hibt@id.wondery.com or call 1-800-433-1298.And check out Bombas's founding story from Randy's first appearance on the show in 2022.This episode was produced by Alex Cheng with music by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by John Isabella. Our audio engineer was Cena Loffredo.You can follow HIBT on X & Instagram and sign up for Guy's free newsletter at guyraz.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

In a world of DTC booms and busts, Bombas has remained a rare constant. The brand, best known for its socks, launched in 2013 as an online-only brand and has consistently grown since then. Today, it brings in over $300 million a year, and while e-commerce remains one of its major revenue channels, it has expanded into stores like Dick's Sporting Goods and Nordstrom. According to co-founders David Heath and Randy Goldberg, the key to Bombas's success has been in staying focused on its core competencies and not expanding too quickly. "We were never the brand that was like let's go out and raise $150 million and try to be the biggest company as quickly as possible," said Heath. The two co-founders joined the Modern Retail Podcast this week and spoke about how Bombas has been able to grow while remaining true to its DTC roots as well as what's on the horizon for the brand. The major constant of Bombas's strategy has been being able to tell its story. The company sells basics like socks, underwear and t-shirts. And it also has a buy-one-give-one model that donates an item of clothing to a person experiencing homelessness. According to Heath, the company has always focused on telling that story as simply as possible. "From day one, as part of our go-to-market strategy, we invested heavily in brand," he said. But the other big lesson has been to figure out how to roll with the punches. As consumption patterns shift -- and social algorithms change -- so too does marketing. "I think that's the hallmark of really good modern brands: you're going to find people where they are in their world -- and you're attaching yourself to their life and not asking them to come into your world," said Goldberg. Put together, Bombas has figured out a model that doesn't stray from its root but allows it to grow to the hundreds of millions. And the co-founders plan on keeping with that plan this year and beyond. "We look at the brands that we admire -- the Nikes, the Lulus, Under Armours, Patagonias of the world," said Heath. "These brands have all been around for 20, 30, 40 years, and they've built brick by brick every single year."

Dave Heath is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Bombas. Prior to the launch in 2013, Dave dedicated two years to rigorous product testing and refinement to create the best performing and most comfortable sock available, while staying true to their mission of helping those in need. Dave holds a BA from Babson College with majors in Marketing, Management, and Entrepreneurship. Previously, he led business development as one of the founding employees at UrbanDaddy followed by joining the new media acquisitions and strategy team at Yucaipa Companies. As a true serial entrepreneur, Dave has founded three companies, with one successful exit, and has invested and consulted on a range of start-up businesses from concept, through launch and continued growth. Dave has been featured on ABC's Shark Tank, NBC TODAY Show, CBS This Morning, ABC Good Morning America, Bloomberg TV and in The New York Times, and was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017.In this episode of The Retail Pilot, Dave Heath joins Ken Pilot and discusses the journey of starting a mission-based sock company and the challenges and successes along the way. He shares insights on the importance of focus, sustainable growth, and using time to your advantage. Dave also talks about the power of partnerships and collaborations that align with Bombas' mission. He emphasizes the need for authenticity and staying true to the brand's values. Additionally, he discusses the role of technology in marketing and the future of the company. In this conversation, Dave Heath discusses the potential of AI in e-commerce and its application in various areas such as asset creation, site updates, and site merchandising. He also introduces Constructor, an AI-powered site merchandising tool. The conversation touches on the use of AI in customer service and the importance of understanding the customer experience. Additionally, Dave shares his favorite streamed shows and provides a promo code for Bombus products.Key Takeaways from this episode of The Retail Pilot with Dave Heath, CEO of Bombas:1.    Entrepreneurial Journey and Problem-Solving Approach: Dave Heath's journey began with a desire to work for himself, learning various skills and exploring different industries, always with the intent of eventually starting his own business. His approach was less about the industry and more about identifying and solving problems. He noticed the lack of socks in homeless shelters, leading him to start Bombas with a mission to donate a pair of socks for every pair sold.2.    Socially Conscious Business Model: Bombas was established with a buy-one-give-one model, similar to TOMS Shoes, to address the significant need for socks in homeless communities. Over time, this model evolved to include not just socks but also underwear and t-shirts, the top three most requested clothing items at homeless shelters.3.    Founding Team Dynamics: Dave Heath, along with co-founder Randy Goldberg and two others, formed a cohesive team where each member possessed specific skills that complemented one another. Their self-awareness of strengths and weaknesses helped them work effectively together, aligning their shared values and visions for the company's ethical growth.4.    Sustainable Growth Strategy: Bombas adopted a deliberate, focused growth strategy rather than chasing rapid expansion. They avoided excessive fundraising and maintained profitability from the outset. They prioritized methodical growth, aiming for sustainability and quality over immediate scale. This approach allowed them to retain control and avoid unnecessary stress associated with continuously raising capital.5.    Multi-Channel Distribution Strategy: Despite primarily being a direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand, Bombas strategically entered the wholesale market after reaching a certain revenue milestone. They carefully selected appropriate retail partners, ensuring the brand fit and maintaining their status as the top-selling sock brand in every store they entered. While primarily D2C-focused, they've recognized the value of being present where customers shop, gradually expanding into various channels without diverting too many resources from their core business.6.    Product Distribution Strategy: Dave Heath emphasizes a focus on strategic distribution channels like Nordstrom rather than vending machines, as the latter may not significantly impact Bombas' growth due to low sales volume.7.    Brand Strategy & Collaborations: Bombas values collaborations that align with their mission. Dave highlights partnerships with Sesame Street, Disney princesses, and LGBTQ+ initiatives, showcasing the brand's commitment to giving back and staying mission-driven.8.    Marketing Approach: Bombas employs a multi-channel marketing strategy, using various platforms like TV (including connected TV), Facebook, Google, and more. They leverage different channels to reach diverse audiences, considering each channel's effectiveness for specific demographics.9.    Competition Perspective: Bombas sees larger commodity incumbents like Hanes, Fruit of the Loom, and Gildan as primary competitors. They aim to capture market share from these established brands by positioning Bombas as a premium mass-market brand known for comfort and quality.10. Tech Integration: While Bombas utilizes technology, such as AI tools for customer service and site merchandising, they prioritize being an apparel company that uses technology, not a technology-driven company. They cautiously approach integrating tech, focusing on customer experience and efficiency without compromising their core values. 

Bombas' one-for-one giving model redefined the sock category. Co-founder Randy Goldberg shares how to launch a business that balances purpose and profit successfully. For more on Bombas and show notes: https://bit.ly/3Tmj6Tc

Randy Goldberg, Co-founder of Bombas, joins the show to discuss the 10-year anniversary of the company, and how their mission plays an integral role in customer retention. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Has a statistic ever shocked you so much you can't forget it?In 2011, David Heath learned the most requested item in homeless shelters was socks. For such a small and ordinary item, David couldn't stop thinking about the impact they had on people experiencing homelessness. He began carrying extra pairs of socks with him while walking around New York City and handing them out to people he met. While it was a small expense for him, it mattered immensely to these people, some of whom had resorted to wrapping their feet with plastic bags and banana peels.David and his friend, Randy Goldberg, wanted to do more. They began researching athletic sock technology and developed two products: one for consumers seeking top-tier socks for athletic pursuits, and one for a person experiencing homelessness. This was the start of Bombas and its buy one, give one model.Eleven years later, Bombas employs 200+ people, generates $300+ million dollars annually, and has donated more than 75 million new clothing items. We invited David Heath, CEO and Co-Founder, to share how a desire to do good launched a multi-million-dollar business, how Bombas has evolved over time, and how it remains focused on helping the homeless.Listen for more insights on:Starting a business with the sole mission for impact.Building and maintaining partnerships.Enabling employees to drive innovation based on their passions.Exploring new impact areas while remaining aligned with a core focus.Resources + Links:David Heath's LinkedIn“This is the Impact Socks, Shirts and Underwear Can Make” Video2022 Impact Report60K DayThe Black Hive CollectionThe Pride Collection (00:00) - Welcome to Purpose 360 (00:13) - Dave Heath • Bombas (03:15) - The Genesis (12:43) - Response (14:48) - The Name and How It Works (20:47) - Favorite Stories (23:35) - Giving Network (27:23) - Real Time Needs (29:18) - Equal Branches (31:00) - Numbers (31:29) - Black and Rainbow Hives (34:45) - Finding Focus (36:13) - Buy One Give One Model (39:58) - The Future (43:48) - Last Advice (46:36) - Wrap Up

David Heath and Randy Goldberg saw an opportunity to disrupt a long dormant—and arguably boring sector...socks. They met at a startup in their 20s, each already had their own side hustles before they hatched a plan to launch a business together. Randy and David didn't initially intend to get into the sock business, but in 2011, David read that socks are the most requested clothing item at homeless shelters. That led them to start a company they called Bombas based on a promise: for each pair of socks a customer bought, another would be donated to the homeless. Within about ten years, their one-for-one start-up turned into a quarter of a billion dollar business that has expanded into sweatshirts, underwear, and t-shirts.Listen to The Great Creators launching September 20thSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bombas co-founders Randy Goldberg and David Heath join me this week to talk their amazing "sock-cess" story. You might remember their company from Shark Tank, but today we're diving a little deeper. We talk about finding the perfect partner, changing the narrative behind work and the importance of keeping a happy team. Plus, they tell me what Daymond John is really like as a partner. So listen in, you're about to learn a lot from these all-star entrepreneurs.

Randy Goldberg is the co-founder and chief brand officer of Bombas, the New York-based sock-maker founded in 2013. Using its one-for-one model, Bombas has to date donated more than 40 million garments to homeless shelters and charities across the US. The company has expanded into making other essential items such as T-shirts and underwear. And recently, the brand has launched in the UK, its first market outside the US. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What do you get when you mix Daymond John, cozy toes, and a charitable mission?    Bombas.    That's right, you get the world's best sock company.    Foundr CEO Nathan Chan recently sat down with Randy Goldberg and David Heath to learn how Bombas went from a growing ecommerce business to a Shark Tank sensation.   Randy and David talk about growing Bombas from heel to toe, including:   Why they bootstrapped as long as possible How preparing for Shark Tank helped them boost their business—even before they got a little TV fame The best advice Daymond John has given them How an authentic, compelling mission inspires loyal customers and employees The biggest mistake ecommerce entrepreneurs make Why they're excited about the future of Bombas   If you're an ecommerce entrepreneur or just a sock-loving fan, this interview is a must.  Who do you want to see next on the podcast? Comment and let us know! And don't forget to leave us a 5-star review if you loved this episode.   Wait, there's more… If you enjoy the Foundr podcast, check out our free trainings. Get exclusive, actionable advice from some of the world's best entrepreneurs.    For more Foundr content, follow us on your favorite platform:  Foundr.com Instagram YouTube Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Magazine  

Join us for this episode of the Good Tidings Podcast, with host Larry Harper—Founder of the Good Tidings Foundation. Today, Larry invites guests and Co-Founders of Bombas Socks, Dave Heath and Randy Goldberg. The idea for the company came quite organically. While scrolling on Facebook one day, Randy came across the fact that socks are the most requested clothing item in homeless shelters. The two had always wanted to start a business together, and after hearing this fact, they felt called to tackle the issue.

Join us for this episode of the Good Tidings Podcast, with host Larry Harper—Founder of the Good Tidings Foundation. Today, Larry invites guests and Co-Founders of Bombas Socks, Dave Heath and Randy Goldberg. The idea for the company came quite organically. While scrolling on Facebook one day, Randy came across the fact that socks are the most requested clothing item in homeless shelters. The two had always wanted to start a business together, and after hearing this fact, they felt called to tackle the issue.

In this episode I am talking with Kelly Cobb, the VP of Giving from Bombas. Bombas’ founders David Heath and Randy Goldberg started Bombas after they learned socks are the #1 most requested clothing item at homeless shelters. From there, the brand's mission to donate a pair of socks for every pair sold was established, and the company set out to create the most comfortable and functional socks. With the mantra, "Bee Better" they set out to be better in the product they make and donate, and also in everyday interactions.  Kelly and I are talking about the story behind Bombas and their mission and about the incredible work they’ve done over the past 7 years to donate over 40+ million socks to 3500 giving partners.    Episode Highlights The story behind Bombas Finding Bombas giving partners to distribute socks to those in need The importance and value of socks to the homeless  How Bombas has designed socks specifically for the homeless The importance of acknowledging the homeless  How COVID-19 has impacted the homeless Bombas 60K Day How is Bombas quantifying success About Kelly Cobb Kelly Cobb is the VP of Community + Giving at Bombas. In her role, she leads the company’s mission to help those in need by donating a specially-designed item for every item purchased. Kelly also engages the Bombas team and community members in volunteer opportunities that further their connection with individuals experiencing homelessness. Before joining Bombas, Kelly owned a floral studio for 5 years.   Connect With Bombas  Website www.bombas.com  Bombas Giving Directory https://bombas.com/pages/giving-directory  Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bombas/  Facebook https://www.facebook.com/bombassocks

This week, we are visited by our great friend, Randy Goldberg. You know him from Bombas but here we talk about the wonderful journey of the Pop Up Flea, which Randy and Michael founded in 2009. It started with their friends in a small event space in SoHo and ultimately involved some of the best-known brands and traveled worldwide. It’s a look back on retail, menswear, events, New York from the wise men behind A Continuous Goldberg. Subscribe at centraldivision.substack.com

This is an encore presentation from 6/21/20.

Listen now | This week, we are visited by our great friend, Randy Goldberg. He joined us to talk about the Pop Up Flea which was a fixture on the calendar around this time for many years. Those were fun times to see friends, make new ones and shop for gifts (or for yourself) in person. We hope we can all do that again soon. This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at www.acl.news/subscribe

People may not be getting dressed and going out like they used to, but for Bombas, sales are up. The sock company is beating the target it set for itself back in January, before the pandemic kept people at home (where socks are a little more optional). "Sales are up," Bombas co-founder and chief brand officer Randy Goldberg said on the Glossy Podcast. "There's that response to comfort and a response to community. And people are looking for these little moments for themselves." Bombas was founded in 2013, starting with an Indiegogo campaign. For every pair sold, the company donates one to the homeless -- "but also people who are at risk and in need," Goldberg said, through a network of more than 3,500 "giving partners." "Those are anything from a small shelter in a small town to big organizations like the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs] and the Special Olympics. We're in all 50 states." Bombas has also recently moved into different categories, including cotton T-shirts. Goldberg talked about how Bombas aims to make the most comfortable socks around, how DTC strategies have changed in recent years and which of the brand's product categories isn't as hot as he thought it would be this year.

Bombas Co-Founders David Heath (CEO) and Randy Goldberg (Chief Branding Officer) discuss how a Facebook post that mentioned socks are the number one most requested item in homeless shelters led to the creation of the brand that supports those communities by way of a one-for-one premium sock donation model. David and Randy also discuss how Toms and Warby Parker served as inspiration, the importance of having a pristine product for a mission-driven organization, their successful Shark Tank experience, and the positive impacts of keeping company culture centerfold. The two further highlight “The Black Hive,” a community of diverse Bombas employees, and what they’ve done to support individuals and organizations during the Black Lives Matter movement resurgence. Tune in to hear how David and Randy’s lack of expertise in the retail industry actually served as an advantage, and learn more about Bombas at Bombas.com. Production Credits: Aaron Kwittken, Jeff Maldonado, Dara Cothran, Lindsay Hand, Katrina Waelchli, Meg Ruocco, Parker Jenkins, and Mathew Passy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In 2011, Dave Heath was an aspiring entrepreneur in search of an idea when a single line in a news story caught his attention. It said that the number one most requested item in homeless shelters was socks. Dave’s mind was spinning and Bombas, the idea, was formed.  Together with his colleague Randy Goldberg, Heath set out to launch a line of socks with a twist. For every pair of socks purchased, Heath and Goldberg would pledge to donate a pair to homeless shelters. It was a bold and potentially risky plan. So they enlisted creative support from Andrew Heath and Aaron Wolk to produce the perfect sock.  By 2013 the co-founders launched Bombas, which is Latin for bumblebee, after raising a little more than 100,000 dollars on Indiegogo. Within a year, they were pitching their idea on Shark Tank and successfully acquired the interest, and additional seed money from apparel impresario Daymond John. Bombas was off and running. Today, Bombas is a juggernaut in the apparel industry, not just for their sales volume but their mindshare. Dave and his co-founders proved that you can build a sustainable and profitable business on a wholesome premise of giving. And from a practical standpoint, they dispelled certain myths of building a retail brand. You see, what makes Bombas special is their commitment to their core values. But what makes them unique, particularly in apparel, is that they’ve been profitable from year one. -- Show Notes: Bombas Socks Giving Back If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe, share with your friends and rate and review on Apple Podcasts and Podchaser. If you have any questions or suggestions for future guests, send an email to growforgood@moreycreative.com. Find Morey Creative Studios on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Subscribe to our blog here. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

As Randy Goldberg says, ‘no one dreams of going into the sock business.’ But if there is one sock company you can name off the top of your head, it’s probably the one Randy built with co-founder Dave Heath. Bombas Socks has grown from a small Ecommerce company with a mission into a $100-million dollar enterprise, and the success they’ve had all boils down to remembering the fundamentals.  On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Randy takes us through his journey to Bombas. He details why founders need to avoid ‘shiny object syndrome’ and focus their sights on the basics if they want to succeed. Plus, he talks about Bombas’ culture of transparency and how to decide between leading with the company mission or the merits of the product when trying to attract customers. Key Takeaways: Bring in the Right People. Scaling requires people — employees, execs, investors, and mentors. Lean on your network, ask questions, hire carefully, and create a dialog with other D2C companies to learn from them. Pro tip: It’s time to bring someone else in when you start to ask questions that neither you nor anyone on your team can answer Ask Yourself, “What Matters More?” When it comes to getting better conversions, don’t let shiny objects distract you. For example, changing the copy or placement of a video matters a lot less than the speed of the site. The faster your site speed, the more conversions you will have. Stay focused on what investments really convert Transparency Impacts the Bottom Line. When employees feel invested in the company and comfortable in the environment you create, they begin to ask more questions, buy-in to the company mission, and work harder to achieve success for themselves and the company For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder of mission.org. Today, I'm really excited to have Randy Goldberg on the show, the co-founder and Chief Brand Officer at Bombas. Randy, welcome. Randy: Thank you for having me. Happy to be here. Stephanie: Really excited to have you. Thanks for taking the time. I'd love to dive into your background a little bit before we get into Bombas, a little bit about what brought you into the world of Ecommerce and starting Bombas. Randy: Yeah, I guess, we have a sock company, an Ecommerce sock company. I say this a lot, but I don't think anybody ever really grows up dreaming of being in the sock business. It was kind of a winding path for me to arrive at Bombas and to think about this company. My background is in branding, so I was a copywriter and a strategist, and I worked for digital agencies and I worked for a lot of brands through the years. Writing brand books, trying to find out where they had gone astray, brands that were sort of struggling a little bit. I think through that work, I gained a perspective on what I thought a good company looked like, talked like, acted like. At some point, I moved from the agency side to the media side and I was working at a digital media company, and that's where I met Dave Heath, my co-founder in Bombas, and we sort of cooked up the idea when we were working together way back then in 2011. Stephanie: Cool. Why did you guys think, I want to start a sock company? Did you both want to start this or did one have to pitch to the other? Randy: Yeah. Well, I don't think we thought of it as a pitch. We were friends and we were both very entrepreneurial in our outlook. Our families were entrepreneurs. We just, I think, had that same point of view on the world, and we liked the idea of maybe starting a business one day. We weren't actively writing things on a whiteboard and crossing off a list, but we would just talk about things and the business landscape at the time. It wasn't, we need to get this done this year, we were just having a regular day, and Dave was on Facebook, and he saw a campaign that the Salvation Army had been doing with Hanes. Randy: The Salvation Army, they had a quote in there that said socks are the most requested clothing item in homeless shelters. We were having lunch, and Dave said, "I saw this quote, did you have any idea about socks and homeless shelters?" And I said, "No, and I don't even understand why." We started to call around to some shelters in New York, and we were talking to people and we just realized that there was a real problem here. If you're living on the streets, a fresh pair of socks, foot hygiene means a lot. You might be walking more and have less frequent opportunities to wash your clothing. And then, shelters don't accept used socks for donations. So they were always having a shortage and it was always a big need and people would have to buy new socks and then donate them. Randy: People just tended to donate the things that they had worn or gently used. We really just wanted to help solve the problem. So, we started thinking about that, we started buying socks and donating them. Then, I guess just the way our minds work, we started to think there's probably an opportunity here. We looked at the success that Toms had been having and saw their one-for-one business model, and Warby Parker had just launched at the time and they had a charitably inclined business. We thought, maybe this business model really works for this product. It really maps well to it. Just because this is a product that people really aren't allowed to donate on their own. Randy: Then we started to think about socks and we just got obsessed with socks. We were like, socks just haven't changed in 50 years. Athletic socks look the same. They're cardboard, they're white or they're black. Even if you're somebody who cares tremendously about the things that you wear, where they come from, what you're putting on your body, the last thing you get to generally is socks. We thought there was an opportunity to make something really great, to really improve on a product that people take for granted, and that are afterthought in the consumer market, to help solve a problem that's an afterthought sort of for shelters and organization. Randy: Just like, if we can make something really great, we'll sell a lot, and if we sell a lot, we can donate a lot, and if we donate a lot, we can help solve a problem in the community where we work and live. It's easy to look back and say that, but at the time, it just took a while for us to wrap our head around this and think about it as a business idea. Stephanie: Very cool. I will say that I'm definitely someone who had socks as an afterthought, but I will say when I tried on Bombas, I was like, this is a whole different level of socks. I didn't realize I cared about them at all. I would normally just get black ones and just be like, whatever, as long as they're short, I don't care. Then I tried them on, I'm like, oh, these are game changing. They're amazing. Randy: Thank you. I think that's what we're going for. We want to change the way people think about socks, and make it hard for you to go back once you put on a pair of Bombas. Stephanie: Oh yeah. You can't. In the early days, when you were starting out, how did you think through the economics of developing the one to one program? Randy: The early days for us, that meant making sure that we could, from the start, bake into the unit economics, the donation pair, so that no matter what anyone said along the path, if we were raising money, if we were building the business, that there's nothing anybody could do because we were ironclad around the donation model. We built it into the covenant of the business. We've codified it. It's just something no one could ever really take away, but just focusing on it from the beginning and making sure that we could afford to do it, as a for profit enterprise, was a big early step. We've grown and we've gotten smarter about it and we've built a big network of giving inside of the company. It's all gotten bigger and better, but it really started with that idea. Randy: I think that's the right question. Did you think about it from the beginning? Yes, or else we wouldn't have been able to do it and maybe somewhere along the road, we would have compromised, but it's been a big part of how we've talked about the business and the brand and a big part of the success of the company, and having a great product on the side for the consumer allows us to afford the development costs of the donation product, which is an important thing to make sure we're making a product for people who are experiencing homelessness or living on the street. All of these things have been really thought out from the start. Stephanie: It's amazing. I think I saw that you reached profitability by year three. What does your revenue look like now, annually? Randy: Well, we don't typically share exact revenues like numbers, but it's a multiple hundred million dollar a year company at this point and profitable. Stephanie: Very cool. Yeah, I think that's what I saw, but I wanted it to come from you instead of me saying what I think that I read. Randy: Yeah. You read correctly. Yeah, so profitability, I think you're seeing a lot of direct to consumer companies and Ecommerce companies now really starting to think about profitability in this moment. The way that people are raising money and what companies who are handing out money have been looking for, it's forcing a lot of companies who've raised a lot of money and had profitability as a down the road kind of goal, shift how they're operating and shift how they're thinking. I see that, and I've talked to founders who were dealing with this and it seems really painful. I think for us, it was a goal from the beginning. We wanted to have a really solid conservative financial outlook, get to profitability quickly, build a business for the long-term, for the long haul. Randy: We want our grandkids to be wearing Bombas. That's one of our core values. I think that plays into the way that we built the business from the unit economics and financial side of things as well, and the way that we approach marketing, which obviously as you know, as a direct to consumer company, is the hot topic, of course. Stephanie: Yep. Were there any issues that you ran into along the way? Because scaling to over a hundred million revenue is probably pretty tough. Is there any lessons you learned along the way or things that you're like, ooh, we did this great, or we maybe should have done this a bit different? Randy: I think the number one lesson is about focus. Know what you do really well, know why your company exists, why your product deserves to exist in the world, and then focus on doing that well, focus on telling the same story over and over and over again. Whenever we've been able to really focus on that product on the donation, on the sort of foundational elements of the business, that's when we've done the best, and that's when the company has grown really well. When we've gotten distracted by, hey, let's try this pop-up retail idea, or let's advertise in this new place that is unproven, but seems good for this one specific reason, and it's taken our focus away from the things that we do best, that's where we've had the most trouble. I think that's been the big theme for us in the early years, is just focus has really led to growth, and it's where we've had the most success as a company. Stephanie: Very cool. When thinking about the first conversion or a brand new customer, do you think the social good aspect of the business sells the product initially? Because it's pretty hard to convey how good the socks are on the website. Randy: Yeah, it is. It's hard until you, I guess, you try them on, and we just want to get as many socks on feet as possible. But yeah, there has been a constant debate at Bombas since day one about what comes first and the way we talk about the company. The quality of the product comfort or the mission, our commitment to give back to the community. Some people come for the product and stay for the mission, and some people will come for the mission and stay for the product. I don't think we've solved that debate. We poll our customers and we're surveying people and we're thinking about this a lot, but I think the thing that works the most in marketing for prospects, people who haven't heard about our company, is talking about comfort, is talking about the quality of the product. Randy: The mission definitely helps complete a sale, helps with the follow on sales, and our customers, people who've already made purchases, expect us to close the loop, report back on how we're doing with the donations that we promise we would do on their behalf. That storytelling element helps us with both sides of it. It's just about where we show up with the mission and where we show up with the product marketing, at what time in the life cycle. It's an ongoing debate and we stay nimble around it, but those are still the two elements, and they have been since the beginning that show up the most in our communication. Stephanie: Cool. The other thing I saw that you all had was the happiness guarantee, which I was like, how do they remain profitable? Because one of the things I think I saw in there was, if your kid outgrows a sock in a year, which I have three kids, so I'm like, that could happen quick, or if your dog chews up a sock, which our dog, [Tossy 00:11:14], does that every day, how do you make sure that people aren't abusing those rules? How did you come up with that happiness guarantee? Randy: I think for us, we think about the great companies that we all like to work with, or shop at, or interact with. A common theme is that they have great customer service and they stand by their products. We wanted to make that a hallmark of Bombas. In the early days, Dave would take all of the calls that would come in to our phone number on his cell phone. So we would be out talking about the business or in a bar, back when there were bars. He would get a phone call and go outside, and an hour later, he'd come back and he'd just talk to a customer. I think that idea of just making sure that we're taking care of the people who are spending money with us, that led to the idea of the happiness guarantee. Randy: We have our internal customer service team, they're called the customer happiness team, and we've also, just sort of connecting it back to the business, to get back to your question, people who interact with our customer service team have two times the lifetime value of customers who don't. We're trying to turn issues that people have into positive experiences, and that turns people into bigger longterm customers, because then they trust us, they trust that we take care of them. Sure, there are people who try and abuse the policy, but that's far outweighed by the number of people who are just trying to solve a problem, or get to the bottom of something and want things to be right and don't want to have to jump through a lot of hoops to get there. Randy: For us, the good of having that really strong internal team to deal with our customers and to respond to problems, and yes, to make sure that if your kid outgrows the sock that's expensive or that ... We'll be there to grow along with you. All those things are ... we just want peace of mind as people go through the process and think about, should I be making this purchase right now? Stephanie: That's great. How do you train your customer happiness team? Because I feel like it takes a certain kind of person to be peppy and to, like you said, have a higher lifetime value with the people who interact with that team. What kind of training process do they go through? Randy: It's pretty rigorous. I think Dave passed on the mentality of our customer happiness team to the person who originally ran the program, and he's still running that team. I think, like almost everything at Bombas, when we have something that we want to do and we feel like we've reached the limit of how we can handle it ourselves, we try and bring in people who are way smarter than we are and have the right skillset, and really focused on hiring great people. It also helps that, people who come to work at Bombas, tend to want to give back to the community and are inclined to support and work for a company that cares about that as well. Then, we in turn, care tremendously about our company and the company culture, and all of those things lead us to find, I think, the people who are right for the roles and write for the company and speak to those core values, and that's how it works with the happiness team. Randy: They're trained, not only on what to say in the situations that come up most often, but how to deal with Bombas customers, how to put the extra spin on it. It's about, I guess, just that level of care. Our whole team really appreciates that customer service team, and we make sure that they know how appreciated and important they are as the first line of defense for our customers internally as a team. I think giving them the support and love that they need as the team that has to deal with a lot, and has to clean up mistakes when they happen and make sure that everybody's happy, and then understanding how we want them to communicate with the world as a brand. The way that we talk in an ad versus a video, versus on the phone with the customer, versus internally, none of that should really be different, right? We're trying to be really consistent as a brand. Stephanie: How do you create that consistency? Because I can see as a company grows, and I've seen this happen before, where you start developing silos and the teams are kind of off doing their own thing, maybe trying their own marketing campaigns, and it starts getting a little bit chaotic. How have you kept a consistent culture and feel at Bombas? Randy: Yeah. We're not immune to some of the issues that you just brought up. But just recognizing it, being honest about it, trying to get ahead of those things, and focusing on that core messaging and communicating well internally. We're also at the stage where we're really thinking about planning and processes as a company as we've grown to 150 employees and being remote, how we interact and how we work cross departmentally. Those types of things are at the front of mind right now. We're hearing it from our team, we listen to ideas, we bring in people to help us. I think we're laser focused on making sure that some of those breakdowns and that siloed work doesn't get the best of us. We have seen that and we're working on it. Randy: I think any company that starts off operating like that, when you have five or 10 people, that would be overbearing, and I don't think the type of people who end up coming to a company that small would appreciate that, but as you grow, you have to adjust and you have to get ahead of it so that people keep that same feeling of freedom in terms of thought, in terms of how they can innovate in their work and get things done, and expectations around their jobs, all that stuff becomes really important to be more documented, to have tighter processes so that people feel freer to do the things that they love to do. That's what we're trying to work on, but it's not an easy thing. Stephanie: Yeah. It's definitely a tough juggle. If someone were to join and they're employee number five, and then all of a sudden, there's 150 employees, it's like, okay, well, I used to be able to do everything at the company, and now you want me to shrink my role. A tough thing to work through with employees. Randy: Yeah. It's a challenge. You want to retain the people who made Bombas, Bombas, but you also want to make sure that people are growing in the right way, and there are opportunities, and the new people who come in at certain levels understand what they're supposed to do and what everybody else is supposed to do. You just start to get into these things that maybe you thought you would never have to deal with if you started a company, but as it grows, this is what it looks like. Stephanie: Yup. Were there any resources that you leveraged along the way when you were growing quickly, when you were like, I need to learn this or I need to figure this out, or companies that you were watching to learn from? Randy: Yeah. I think that's been our mindset since the beginning. Just from our early advisory board, just to fill in the gaps, to hires that we've made, the things that we tend to lean on are people. Dave and I are like, we don't know the first thing about performance marketing, when we started this business. We need to bring in somebody who's an expert in that, or at least, have somebody on our advisory board who can help answer questions for us as we grow that until we have that right person, or to help us find the right person. That's been a big part of how we've grown this business, is leaning on our network to reach out to people, to ask questions, to make good hires, and then watching other D2C companies and having a good dialogue with the other D2C companies who have grown to our size and larger. That's been really helpful as well. Randy: Then you also think about companies like Toms. They've been really helpful to us, in terms of watching out for certain mistakes that they've made along the way with their donation aspects of their business. They've been really open with us about those things and helping us avoid them. We try and do the same with other companies who reach out and want advice from us as well. Stephanie: Very cool. How did you think about building out the website? What kind of things did you want to have on there to make sure that you kept with the brand story, but also, sold enough to be able to be profitable to keep the model working? Randy: It's a great question. The idea of what a website looks like when it's your only store is so important. You want to have that right blend of storytelling, but you want people to be able to breeze through the checkout process the right way. That's been a journey for us. I don't think it's anywhere near where we want it to be, but I would think that you would ask any direct to consumer company and they have a lot they want to do, and their technology roadmap is pretty long, and that's part of it. You're always building, you're always tweaking, you're always improving. You're looking at the data and you're making changes to just make it better. Randy: In the beginning, at some point we have to replatform. But just the processes along the way to get us from where we started to where we are now, to where we're heading, it takes a lot of care and attention. Like I said, when it's your only store, I think it's your job and your duty to make sure that it works and operates really well. Stephanie: Yeah, I completely agree. How did you know it was time to replatform and what was that experience like? Randy: I knew it was time when we just had so many issues with managing traffic or the backend or uploading content. It was wrong. We launched the business and the website in 2013. Since 2013, there've been a lot of changes in technology and the way that Ecommerce works and looks. If you went back to a site from 2013, as a 2020 consumer, you wouldn't last a minute. You'd be out. Stephanie: You'd bounce right away. Randy: You'd bounce. There was a lot more tolerance then, but less people using Ecommerce because the experience just wasn't great. I think, if you go back even further, and I think about this a lot, if you were starting a direct to consumer company in 2009 and you didn't have a lot of money that you would raise, building the website itself would have been prohibitively expensive for most brands, for most companies. But if you managed to get it up, the marketing was basically free. There was no algorithm that was holding your content back. If you had a Facebook page, whatever you posted, everyone who followed you with anyone who shared it, and anyone who got added to your page, not some of these early companies, resources to build a site were able to build huge businesses. Randy: But then, as it shifted, now, if you want to launch a direct to consumer company, the technology is basically free, getting that website up, but the marketing is prohibitively expensive. It's totally flipped. We just happened to launch, I think, in a sweet spot where the technology had gotten more affordable and the marketing was still affordable, but it was not free like it had been in 2009, and it wasn't very hard or challenging environment like it is now. We sort of had time to figure out both pieces, and we had runway to figure out the marketing and we could afford the technology. Then that got a lot better, and just have to stay on top of and ahead of all those things. Stephanie: That makes sense. To focus on the website piece first, and then we can jump into the marketing aspect, so the website, was there any like big fundamental changes that you made where you're like, this made the biggest difference when it came to sales and conversions and even getting traffic in the first place? Anything that you remember that you change where you're like this had the biggest improvement for us or a couple of things? Randy: Site speed, I think is the number one thing. As a person who comes from the creative side of the business, a copywriter or strategist, there's nothing that I could do from my previous job or as a brand person that would make the improvement of one second of site speed in terms of how something loads or how it acts. Just sort of getting over some of the sort of shiny objects into saying, oh, if we change the copy here, or what if we put this video here, or had this type of look on our site? If you make your site faster, it will convert better. Things like that, just understanding the fundamental way things move and what people want from you, layering the other stuff on top then becomes just sauce and becomes fun. Then you can start to have incremental changes and things that work. But I think, just looking at site speed, if you want one good thing, that's where I would start, as dry as that might be. Stephanie: Yeah. No, that's a great one. Was there anything affecting the site speed that you were surprised by? Randy: I think the way that you manage and load images, obviously has a big effect on that. Your product architecture and understanding Randy: I think some of these things you don't realize when you're starting out, but the way things are organized, hosted, served, there's sort of best in class ways of doing that now. But if you want to have your variants of your products perform a certain way, or if you want to create bundles in a different way than most companies do it, then all of a sudden, you're creating ... you could be creating extra things that are weighing your site down, even though you think ... it helps you organize the things that you want to sell the way that you see them in your mind. It doesn't always benefit you because maybe you're slowing things down. If people are bouncing before they're even seeing it, then what's the point? Again, this isn't my area of expertise, but these are the things that you learn along the road when you're doing everything in a business when there's five people. Stephanie: Yeah, I think that backend infrastructure piece is hard to focus on in the beginning because you're so excited about the product and the marketing, and like you said, getting good copywriting and telling your friends that you don't really think about how to set up, maybe the data and the backend piece to actually create a good performing website. Randy: Totally. Listen, like I said, my background was in branding. I was a copywriter. I think we built this business around the brand because it's, in many ways, a commodity that you turn into a brand. You do that by being really consistent and having good storytelling and build a moat through brand. But none of that exists if you don't get the infrastructure piece right, and you can't get to that. I talked to founders who were starting companies, and they're so focused on hiring the right creative agency or branding agency, they'll put together the right logo, and it's just not the right place to start in my mind, even though I love that work and I love thinking about that for companies and thinking about how you communicate to the world and understanding why your product exists, but without that fundamental infrastructure piece, no one's going to care about that other piece. It's just maybe a little bit of a sad truth for creative side of business people. Stephanie: That's okay. Got to hear it sometimes. Randy: That's right. Stephanie: One thing I saw that you guys were doing was that you were investing in a data science team and embedding more data elements into the customer journey. Can you tell me a little bit more about that and how you knew it was the right time to bring on a team like that? Randy: How will you know it's the right time is that when you start to ask questions that you can't answer, and nobody internally can answer it. That's the truth, and when one person ... Randy: You also know when you're having a debate about something in the business and somebody is able to pull out data or a statistic related to what you're talking about, and the conversation ends because it's hard to argue with the data. When you see that and you've thought about it the other way, and you're not trying ... You can't convince data, right? I know [crosstalk] manipulated. Stephanie: There's no argument there. Randy: That's right. Then you sort of think, this is really valuable, and rather than trying to think about something from the perspective of, I think it should work this way, you want something to show you how it should work, and you want to be able to interpret data the right way and be able to use it to your advantage to build out a strategy, rather than just making assumptions and going off of somebody who has the most experience or who has the most seniority. I think companies get in trouble when they just rely on the loudest voice in the room or somebody who's the most persuasive at arguing rather than bring data as a voice into the room for decision making. Randy: I think it started to creep in when we would understand a little bit what we don't know, and then have debates that were a little bit out of our depth and we didn't have the right people. We didn't really have that skill in the beginning. We knew that it would be a big part of this business, even back in 2013. We just knew that it wasn't the first thing we were going to invest in. It just sort of came naturally to the time. We were always excited about the idea of what a data science team could bring to the table for a sock company. There was a point where you almost can't operate without it anymore. Stephanie: Yeah. That's awesome. What does it look like now having that team, and what kind of metrics are you guys paying most attention to? Randy: A lot of the metrics are the same. You'll see a lot of Ecommerce companies paying attention to, but what the team looks like, and what's interesting is, now that we have the team in place, getting other teams to work with that team the right way is the key, and getting our directors and decision makers accustom to partnering with the data team, to help surface solutions to problems and present them and work, it goes back to some of the work that we're doing, trying to figure out the processes and cross departmental work and to avoid some of the siloed behavior that you brought up earlier. A big part of that is the data team and how they can help support. There's support teams within an organization, there's execution teams, and that's very much a support team, and they love answering questions for teams, and some teams use the data and analytics team more than others. Randy: We just try and be really loud about it at our all hands meetings and present back case studies so that people understand how they could better use that team. It's a process and something that was getting better all the time, but you just sort of have to make it central to how you operate as a company. That doesn't happen overnight. It's a big change. We've been working on that for the last six months to a year in a major way. I think it's really paying off for us. Stephanie: Very cool. Yeah, I definitely have seen business intelligence teams in the past struggle with being able to create a partnership with the product team or the engineers. I like the idea of showing a case study. So instead of pushing it on a team member, it's like, well, here's what another team did. Look how great this turned out, and encourage them to want to partner with that team even more. Randy: Yeah. You're making decisions, how many times a year should we ... We're not a promotional company. But if you wanted to ask a question, like how often should we do a sale? There's logical times of the year when you think that should happen, and the merchandising team might have a different perspective than the marketing team, and using the data team to think about the effect on customers or prospects. There's so much information that could help steer a decision like that, that is major to the business. Those are the types of things where you start to see a lot of power in the team like that. Stephanie: Yeah. We're talking about data. I want to also shift into the aspect of transparency. I read that you and your co-founder both had subpar experiences with transparency at previous companies you were at. I wanted to hear, how do you think about being ... Well, first tell me the story. I want to know all the nitty gritty details, and also how did that influence your culture now? Randy: Sure. I don't know, the cliff notes is that was a major influence on our culture now, but we had the experience together. Like I mentioned, we worked together at a previous company, and at that company, the person who ran the company brought amazing people together, and there was a great team, and the work was fulfilling and we learned a lot, but it was really hard to have conversations around career growth or compensation, or how well is the company doing? Or data. One person tended to hold on to decisions for so long that it was counterproductive and it was demotivating for people. You felt nervous to even ask a question, and nobody understood their stock options. You would ask questions about it and you'd get them response months later. Randy: That sort of fogginess around the things that people really care about when they're going to work at a smaller company, it was really hard for us. We knew no matter what company we started together, building a culture of transparency, where people really understood the why behind the business, the core values, the financial performance, what their ownership meant, and a culture of being able to ask questions, that was hallmark from the beginning. We just wanted to create the company that we would have loved to have worked at and centering our employees in the business, and thinking about them just as much as we do our bottom line. Our theory was that it would make the bottom line better. People would be more inclined to give something beyond their capacity or to continue to learn or to grow if they felt safe and supported at the company. Stephanie: Cool. Yeah, that definitely is a good way to build a company from the ground up, and maybe not fun to have that experience, but hey, you learn from the best people you work for and the worst people you work for. Randy: Absolutely. I wouldn't trade that experience because that's what led to the culture that we've built at Bombas. I think, if you talk to our employees and the way they think about it, we're maybe more proud of that than anything else that we built in this company. Did I give you enough nitty gritty details? Is that good enough? Stephanie: Yeah, I was hoping for a little more drama, but I'll take it. That was good. Randy: There was plenty of drama. We can talk about that offline. Yeah. Stephanie: That sounds good. Earlier, I mentioned, I also wanted to hit on your marketing a little bit. What kind of channels do you focus on? What are you seeing success in right now in any new channels that you're excited about? Randy: Yeah, for us, listen, we're a direct to consumer company that started in 2013. Can you guess what our number one marketing channel is? Stephanie: Facebook? Randy: Bingo. Right. Okay. I think we still see a lot of success there, and while it might've been a way larger percentage of our marketing mix in the early days, and we've diversified away from that a fair amount, it's still an important driver for us. In the beginning, in the early days, we would create a video that we didn't even intend to be an ad, just a thank you to our customers, and then eventually it gets turned into an ad on Facebook that's seen a hundred million times. Leaning into the trends and trying to see around the corner at Facebook. now working closely with that team. has really helped grow our business. Randy: One of the things that we have had since the beginning is ROI positive or breakeven on first purchase. We're not over our skis on Facebook spend, while lot of companies are to just to try and build up their customer base. For us, it was important to really be disciplined. We knew that if we were going to grow our budget and grow our company, and we were a really marketing led company, we'd have to diversify away. So, Hello Podcasts, radio, direct mail, TV. Those are all big parts of the business now, and they're all growing probably at a faster rate as a percentage at least of the business than our online ads on Facebook. But search has grown for us tremendously in the last year and a half as our brand has grown and recognition has grown. Randy: Some of that comes from broader marketing, like on TV, and then people are searching Bombas by name, and we can lean into search advertising and that works better. Some of these things are just about timing. Yeah, we still have a tremendous success sort of trialing things out online. We've never used a creative agency. Everything is internal at Bombas, so all of our creative direction and the marketing team and the partnership between the creative team and the brand teams and the marketing team operates as an internal agency. We like places where we can test things, test creative, test lines, test different cuts of videos, see what works, preview it, and then build it out into bigger campaigns that could work across all those different places that we talked about earlier that I mentioned. Randy: I don't know, that's sort of more of an overview than what's working now. But if I think about the last few months, when everyone's at home with COVID, people who were still able to afford to be buying things right now online are looking for comfort, and socks have done well in this moment. On the other side of things, we talk a lot about our efforts in the community and how we've adopted and been able to help out in this moment above and beyond how we normally do. That's also something that people want to hear about. For us, it's the combination of the product and the storytelling and the marketing mix, and making sure that we're nimble enough in all three of those places to make adjustments as we build and grow. Stephanie: That's awesome. Do you find that you have a community also, because it seems like with your story and your brand, you would have this community of people who want to lift you up and talk about you and spread the word organically without you really having to push too hard? Randy: Yeah, absolutely. Community is a big word at Bombas. Something that has been since the beginning. I think about the community of giving partners that we have. In the beginning, when we wanted to donate the socks, you buy a pair and we donate a pair on your behalf. We didn't know how to do that. We started with one giving partner that would accept socks from us, and we learned a lot from them. Then we built a specific sock that we donate, that's more tailored to the needs of the homeless community. Since then, now we have 3,500 giving partners across all 50 States. These are the people who are working really hard on the front lines helping out that community and doing what they can to serve their communities, and our job is to support them. Randy: That is a big community. We get a lot of feedback from them. Then you have our customers who really care tremendously about the product and the donation aspect of it, and they're telling our story on their behalf. You mentioned earlier about one of the keys, I think for us is consistency. The more you're telling the same story in different nuanced ways, the easier you make it for other people to tell your story on your behalf, and that word of mouth marketing, or letting people explain to somebody else when they're having dinner that, hey, they just got these socks and they're really excited about them. Randy: They donate for every pair they sell, and they also just happen to change the way they feel about putting on a pair of socks in the morning, and they feel more supported and comfortable in their daily life. That's a pretty amazing thing that you can get somebody talking about socks at dinner. I think all of this stuff is related, making sure the messaging is tight, keeping that internal, having a marketing team that's nimble and always trying new to new and different areas, and then having that product that's really high quality to support all of that, to give you the confidence to go out and sell something. Stephanie: That's great. How do you keep things organized? Because I'm thinking about, you have all these community organizations that you're mentioning to do the one to one program, then you've got your own product that you need to focus on. How do you make sure that you're spending the right amount of time with each area? Randy: You don't want to be playing whack-a-mole, I guess. You want to be seeing ahead of things a little bit. There's a certain element of making sure ... You start to see when some friction comes into a certain side of the business and you need to spend a little bit more effort getting your go-to-market process ironed out, or on the technology side, if we don't install an ERP process in the next X amount of time, we could see a lot of trouble. I think that starts with a leadership team that communicates really effectively, often open, and is really humble, and then syncing up on our company roadmap, and making sure that when something does seem like it needs a little bit more attention, that people spend their time on it. Randy: That's the idea. I guess some of that is also thinking about, and talking to companies that are a year or two ahead of us, and have been through some of these sort of growing pains at the same times, and looking for the pitfalls that they went through and trying to get ahead of it rather than to have to be reactionary. Stephanie: The D2C community, it seems like they're very helpful with each other, and you just mentioned, looking to someone who's maybe two to three years ahead of you, how have you utilized that community and leaned into it to get advice or build friendships or mentorship? Randy: Yeah, it's a great community. For us, we're a pretty open group. We talked about transparency and communication as pillars of Bombas from the beginning. We want to help out other companies who are coming up behind us, and then we've looked to other direct to consumer companies, and other, generally, just good companies to try and help us out. You ask the question and you find that people are generally willing to say like, yeah, this is how we did this, or connect with this person on our team. They know that at some point they'll have a question for you. We've always been just asking questions outside of the organization. It's the same approach with hiring. We want to bring in people who are smarter than we are. Randy: We want to ask the questions to the companies who are ahead of us. You don't get the answer if you don't ask the question. It's just an important thing, and I'm not sure why this group of companies especially is more open or collaborative, seeming than other groups that you've been in, but maybe it's this generation of founders and the way that we grew up and the interest in community, and the expectation from customers that our company just can't look the way it used to look or act the way it used to act, and it has to have more of a purpose. Maybe that just drives us all to be a little bit more open and a little bit more flexible and a little bit less guarded about some of the things that we're doing. Stephanie: Yeah, I agree. It also just seems like there's so many opportunities. It's not like you're going to be talking to someone who's doing exactly what you're doing. There's just so many opportunities and so many things to start and try that I'm sure that also helps with people wanting to share and show how they did things. Randy: Yeah. I don't really feel competitive with anyone in that space. In some ways, those companies, you could see them as more of our competition than another sock company, because we're competing for the attention of people online. It doesn't matter what you're selling. If somebody else is taking away time that somebody might spend thinking about Bombas, then I guess that's competition, but approaching it, from a lens of collaboration and like, if they can help us know we can help somebody else, it's just the way we've done it. I'm not sure it's right, or it does feel like it's helped us. It is nice to feel like there is a community around this. I like to think about these companies, I like the community of the businesses. Randy: I'd rather be lumped in with these companies, as a community of people that can help each other with the business side of things, than on the brand side of things. I'm wary of being one of the direct to consumer brands out there, because I don't feel like that set of companies always looks the best or the type of press that is out there is always positive. For me, it's just about the people running it and the people at these companies, and making sure that people in our teams are connecting to people who've done something that they maybe don't know how to do perfectly. Stephanie: All right. Before we jump into a few higher level Ecommerce themes, I wanted to hear what is the best day in the office look like for you? Randy: Oh, the office. Stephanie: How do you walk home when you're like snapped in and you're like, that was a good day. Randy: Remind me of what an office is. Stephanie: Okay. What's the best day from your bedroom look like? Randy: Well, okay. It is interesting to think about at home versus at the office. The office is a big part of who we were as a company and getting everybody together and that spirit of community that comes into it, and being able to sit down with someone face to face. We do miss that. Although the teams are really productive and risen to the challenge of working remotely. The best day feels like when something goes well beyond what you expected and teams are celebrating each other and recognizing each other. Also, when we have a speaker from one of our giving partners to give us perspective on what's happening in our work life and why maybe it's not the most important thing in our life and in our world. Randy: When all of those things are kind of clicking together, I think people remember why they work at this company, what's truly important, how they can impact it, and then the collaboration and the spirit that comes along with it. Those are the best days for me, when you're reminded of what's important and how that impacts the company. Stephanie: I think it's good to document those days too. I really like, there's a coffee shop, Philz, right up the street, and they have all these pictures of their employees and just having fun and team meetings they have. It's on the way when you're headed to the bathroom, but it's really fun. I would think as an employee, but also as a customer to see and remember like what it felt like that day and how excited this person looks when they're receiving this award. Because it seems like it could be easy to forget when something's moving so quick. Randy: Totally. I love that idea. I also think about the times when we all got to volunteer together. Now we tend to volunteer in smaller groups which is obviously still great. We have sign up sheets for all of our volunteer opportunities and you have to pounce on them to get the spots that you want. I think that speaks a lot about the culture of the company, but some of the photos you look back on from those moments, or those days when the team feels really connected, those are really exciting days. Stephanie: Yep. All right. A higher level Ecommerce question. What do you think the future of online shopping looks like, like in 2025? Randy: Ah, like when we're all driving around in flying cars, what does Ecommerce look like? Stephanie: Yup. I'm on Mars. Where are you? Randy: I might be on Mars too. Do you want to have a rival colony? I'm down or maybe we have a collaborative colony. Stephanie: Okay. Oh, I'm down. Maybe, we'll see. Randy: We'll see. Okay. All right. We'll see. We'll figure it out then. Stephanie: It depends if you accept my LinkedIn request, I guess, then I'll know. I'll be like, is it any cooler now? Randy: Wait, that's how we judge if you're cool, is if you accept our LinkedIn request? Stephanie: I just made it up, but we'll see. I might have higher criteria afterwards. Randy: Okay. All right. We'll put a pin in that. I don't know what the future of Ecommerce looks like, I got to tell you, I know the percentage of people who get comfortable shopping online, that's only going to go up. I know that companies are going to invent new ways to make it easier for people to buy their product, to review their product, to look at it. I think ease is the name of the game. In a world that's going to be more and more competitive, the way to stand out is going to change. All I know is it's not going to look like it looks right now, and having the attitude that, even if you're doing something right, that the way to succeed in a few years, it's going to be a different version of right, then you'll be okay. Stephanie: Yep. I love that. All right. Before I move into the lightning round, anything that you wanted to share that we missed, where you're like, I really wish you asked this, Stephanie, and you just didn't? Randy: No, like I said, I'm here for you guys. You want to talk about Mars and infrastructure, then great. Whatever you want to talk about. Stephanie: Mars and the moon, that'll be the next podcast. Anyone who wants to sponsor it, hit us up. I don't know what we're going to talk about, but we're going to need help to figure it out. All right. Lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer, Randy. Are you ready? Randy: I'm ready. Stephanie: All right. What's up next on your reading list? Randy: Can we just start that over? Sorry. Stephanie: Yep. What's next on your reading list? Randy: Up next on my reading list is the Mike Nichols book. I'm not sure what it's called, but I'm excited to read it. Stephanie: What's it about? Randy: Its about the director, Mike Nichols, and his life. Stephanie: Cool. We'll have our producer, Hillary, will find the link to that and everyone can go explore it there. Randy: I don't tend to read business books. I know that they could be helpful, but I'm more interested in people, humanity, fiction, novels. Stephanie: Yep. Cool. Any podcasts you listen to? Randy: Yeah. There's a great podcast I listened to about words called The Allusionist, Allusionist with an A. Love that podcast. I have a whole list, but let's just do one. Stephanie: Yeah. We'll check that out. Any hobbies that you're really getting into these days? Randy: Hobbies that I'm really getting into. I really like this sport called paddle tennis. It's not pickleball, it's not ping pong. It's called paddle tennis. If you look it up, it's like a fast version of tennis. You play with a paddle and a tennis ball, but you poke a hole in it. There's like a really small, but passionate community around the sport. It's really fun. Stephanie: Do you play on a tennis court? Randy: You play on a small tennis court. It's basically the service boxes and two-ish foot baseline, and a net. You serve under hand, and you can't serve [inaudible 00:52:55], and you poke a hole on the tennis ball so it doesn't fly everywhere, but it still bounces. It acts and feels like tennis, but like a faster version. It's really cool. You can play in New York. There's courts in New York in StuyTown and Peter Cooper Village, and there's courts in Venice Beach in California. Those are kind of the two centers in the US. It's not a very big popular sport. Stephanie: We will have to bring it up to Palo Alto. I will be the one do that. That would be my initiative over the next year. Randy: Do it. Stephanie: All right. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about, and who would your first guest be? Randy: Oh man. If I was going to have a podcast, wow, I don't know. Do we need another podcast? Do we need a podcast from me? Stephanie: Yes, we do. Randy: Maybe it would just be rants. Just do like a short rant every week. I don't know. Stephanie: I like that. Hey, that seem to do well sometimes. Stephanie: That's okay. All right, this one's slightly harder so you might have to think. What one thing will have the biggest impact on Ecommerce in the next year? Randy: I think the thing that will have the biggest impact on Ecommerce in the next year is the timing on reopening the economy and stores and retail. If people can't go to stores or don't feel comfortable going to stores, they're going to, inevitably, accelerate their comfort level with shopping online. We already see that happening. I think it's just going to push that trend line even further forward. I'm for one, excited about it. I think the biggest, biggest test for this will be this Q4 and the holiday season, and to see what percentage of shoppers are shopping on Ecommerce and what they're demanding of Ecommerce retailers that they weren't a year ago when the percentages were smaller. Stephanie: Yeah, I completely agree. Great answer. Randy, it's been a blast having you on the show. Where can people find out about you and Bombas? Randy: You can find out about Bombas at bombas.com, and everywhere else you would expect, B-O-M-B-A-S. That's it. Thank you for listening and thanks for having me. Stephanie: Yeah. Thanks so much. It's been fun. See you next time. Randy: All right. See you next time.  

Randy Goldberg, Co-Founder of Bombas, takes a look at what DTC brands are doing now and what they need to do to succeed during a crisis. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Across the US, socks remain the no. 1 most requested clothing item at homeless shelters. When Dave Heath and Randy Goldberg discovered this need in the homeless community, they decided to solve the problem head on. Bombas launched in 2013 with a mission to change the way people think about socks. Not only are socks a critical item of clothing that needs to be at its comfiest, but they can be a way for all of us to make people in homeless, in-need and at-risk communities feel seen. When Kelly Cobb joined the company in 2016, she had the opportunity to define her role as VP of Community and Giving. Beyond the brand’s “buy one, give one” model, Bombas works closely with thousands of giving partners to engineer clothing that specifically meets the needs of people who don't have the luxury of putting on clean clothes every day. Kelly and her team leads their Community Program, which enables like-minded community members to volunteer and support the brand's dedication to helping the homeless, and better understand the root issues of homelessness. Today, Bombas has donated over 26 million high quality, specially-designed clothing items (socks and shirts) to those in need. Learn more about Bombas: https://bombas.com -- This episode is sponsored by Coin Up, a revolutionary mobile donation app that makes giving effortless, while making fundraising more efficient. Learn more: coinupapp.com -- Advertise with us: sincerelyhueman.com/advertise Pitch your story: sincerelyhueman.com/contact Follow Sincerely, Hueman on Instagram @sincerelyhueman This show is produced by Hueman Group Media. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/sincerelyhueman/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/sincerelyhueman/support

On today's episode, Bombas Co-Founder and Chief Brand Officer Randy Goldberg joins Adam Conner for a live conversation in New York City.Today, you'll learn: Randy's inspiration to found Bombas with co-founder Dave Heath, and the underlying purpose which pervades the brand How Bombas creates communities around its socks and sock wearers What authenticity means to Randy What's on the horizon for Bombas, including a product launch previously unshared with the public Be sure to stay subscribed for more content and thought leadership like this, and do please leave a rating and review on iTunes if you like what you hear.Reach out to Adam Conner on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjconner/ or via email at adam.conner@govivoom.com with suggestions for guests, content, or general interest/feedback.Find more at https://www.podcast.vivoom.co/.Enjoy!Music: "Streetview" by Jahzzar is licensed under a Attribution-ShareAlike License (CC BY-SA 4.0)

In this episode Kelle welcomes astrologer and spiritual practitioner Randy Goldberg on to Spirit Sherpa to discuss what it’s like to be a spiritual practitioner as well as some recommendations for those who may be considering walking that path in the future. Kelle and Randy discuss some about their journeys so far as well as touching on spirituality in general.References:-For more information about Kelle Sparta or Kelle Sparta Enterprises:--Website: www.kellesparta.com--Email: kelle@kellesparta.com--Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/KelleSparta1/-For more information about Joe Caliendo Jr (Joey C) or Honu Voice Productions:--Email: joeyc@honuvoice.com--Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HonuJoeyC/-For more information about Randy Goldberg:--Website: http://www.astrodc.com-Driveabout (Spirit Sherpa Theme): Driveabout (Full Version)--Written by: Kelle Sparta--Performed by: Kelle Sparta and Daniel Singer--Produced by: Daniel SingerKeywords:spirit guides, spiritual guidance, spiritual therapist, spiritual counseling near me, spiritual therapist near me, types of spirit guides, 7 spiritual laws, metaphysical properties, finding your spirit guide, contacting your spirit guide, list of spirit guides, contacting spirit guides, my spirit guide, spiritual guidance near me, spiritual energy healing, spirit guides and angels, spiritual guide near me, a spirit guide, spiritual marriage counseling, angel spirit guides, spiritual psychotherapy, free spiritual guidance, spiritual healing therapy, angels and guides, the spirit guide, your spirit guide, metaphysical healing, channeling spirit guides, spirit guides in dreams, meeting spirit guides, asking spirit guides for help with love, spiritual healing hands, shaman spirit guide, spiritual guidance counselor, psycho spiritual therapy, understanding spirit guides, metaphysical properties of, spirituality guidance, i need spiritual guidance, spirituality and psychotherapy, master spirit guide, guide to spiritual awakening, spiritual couples counseling, Kelle Sparta, The Spirit Doctor, Spirit Sherpa, Spirit, Spiritual Life, Manifestation, Magick, Realms, Shaman, Shamanism, Wicca, Paganism, Life Transformation, Personal Journey, Personal Growth, Randy Goldberg, Spiritual PractitionerCredits and Licensing:“Spirit Sherpa” is the sole property of Kelle Sparta Enterprises and is distributed under a Creative Commons: BY-NC-ND 4.0 license. For more information about this licensing, please go to www.creativecommons.org. Any requests for deviations to this licensing should be sent to kelle@kellesparta.com. To sign up for, or get more information on the programs, offerings, and services referenced in this episode, please go to www.kellesparta.com. This episode of “Spirit Sherpa” has been produced by Honu Voice Productions. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

EP168 - Bombas founder David Heath     David Heath is the CEO and Co-Founder of Bombas (@bombas), a fast growing, energetic e-commerce apparel company, focused on making the most comfortable socks in the history of feet, while helping those in need. Founded because socks are the number one most requested clothing item at homeless shelters, for every pair they sell, they donate a pair to someone in need. In this interview, we cover a wide range of topics including the Bombas founding story, their SharkTank experience, the DTC business model and growth challenges, social marketing, innovation, the brick and mortar. If you’re inspired by the Bombas story, they are hiring!  FREE SOCKS included. https://boards.greenhouse.io/bombas Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 168 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Friday, February 22, 2019 from the eTail West tradeshow in Palm Desert, CA. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason “Retailgeek” Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded on Friday February 22nd 2019 live from the etail West trade show, here in semi Sunny Palm Desert I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and unfortunately Scott is trapped on a plane so we’re going to talk about him and assign him a bunch of action items. One of the top trends we always cover on the show is direct to Consumer Brands and so we’re excited to have on the show one of the top DTC companies in the apparel industry, so joining us from bombas we have the CEO and co-founder Dave he. David: [1:01] Thank you. Jason: [1:02] Hey Dave thanks very much for being on the show a long time listeners will know we always like to get things started by getting a little bit of the background about how you came to your current role can you tell us a little bit about your bio. David: [1:13] Yasso born and raised in New York and I don’t think we need to go back that far, but I so actually my dad’s not to renew are so very early on it I knew that entrepreneurship was something that I wanted to do was very inspired by him and watching him build a business from, the basement of our house to you know something that I think we’re all very proud of I need to go to school for entrepreneurship at Babson College and then upon graduation. I always found that every job I had I can end up working for a smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller company ultimately landed at a media company where I was the seventh employee Rana clean up where I ended up meeting one of my co-founders Randy Goldberg, it’s been 6 years there we developed our relationship and kind of always shared his mutual passion for wanting to start a business together one day. We developed business plans for numerous ideas ranging from services to pack the product, ultimately it was kind of one of these moments of Fate that I think let us to where we are today I have Andre scrolling on Facebook back in 2011 I came across a quote that said that socks with the number one most requested clothing item at homeless shelters in. I immediately wasn’t like oh my God there’s some business to be had here I just kind of stopped me in my tracks and I was like what you said something that. [2:38] I’ve never spent more than a second of my life or day thinking about is perceived as a luxury item for somebody else, so I remember walking over to Randy’s desk and I remember sharing the quote with him and then over the next couple weeks we both found that we just couldn’t shake this idea, obviously followed entrepreneurship and the other Trends were happening in the startup World in, Tom’s was in there 50 or business and growing incredibly fast where we park her just announced that they had launched about six months prior and kind of bug and reinvigorated the conversation around the one for one business model cuz when more be first launched. They were one for one I wear that was kind of their remains take they’ve more position to be a fashion brand these days babe. That’s some kind of the light bulb went off and we were like, what if we created a company where we donated a pair of socks for every pair of socks that we sold to help him solve this problem in homelessness. Remember like okay well what type of socket we integrate how are we going to create, no carve out our place in the in the market and so we spend the next two years looking at your doing research and development trying every pair of sock on in the market and ultimately landed on was. [3:55] I’m much more comfortable and Innovative kind of everyday casual athletic sock so at the time Brands like happy socks and Paul Smith we’re coming out with these brightly colored dress socks and your funky dress socks for men wear a trend Randy and Iraq start of guys we were jeans and sneakers to work everyday. Jason: [4:14] And you are tube socks up till then right. David: [4:16] Oh yeah totally totally you know Walmart all packed everything, and so what we ended up realizing was that there was this large gap in the athletic Market where you guys are. 12 pack from Walmart or you buy these individual premium price products that were really aimed towards the runners and cyclists and basketball players and hikers that were costing 15 1820 $38 a pair and so I was like what did Linnaeus a $38 pair of socks from a $2 pair of socks. So all of this technology and Innovation seamless toe arch support comfort footbed you know high-quality fabric new articulation in the heel. Amounted actually a lot more Comfort just an everyday wear but I was realizing that all of these sock companies are marketing all of these Innovations just towards the enthusiast. [5:04] I’m kind of waiting our light bulb moment our our our our our moment way so what if we took all those Innovations and marketed towards the mass Market consumer and, pitched in a while seamless toe is better for standing on your feet every day as a nurse or a firefighter or a baker or you know, mom chasing after her kids or a school teacher. And that’s bombas was born and we launched the company back in August of 2013 and here we are five and a half years later we’ve just donated I believe our 15 million pair of socks. Team has grown significantly we continue to double your over here and sales yeah it’s been a wild ride. Jason: [5:47] That’s awesome I put your key like there’s some pesky details that might have stopped some people from pursuing that like expertise in like design or Manufacturing, Jane or a bunch of stuff I didn’t hear you mention having a having a rich background in. David: [6:04] Did not did not at all. Jason: [6:06] Yes I’m sort of curious was bombas able to happen because, those things are now easier to Outsource in your able to leverage that or did you guys just jump in and learn how to do stuff and make some mistakes and kind of grow the expertise organically. David: [6:20] Yeah I think it was I think it was a mix of luck and the fact that we didn’t have any expertise that allowed us to create a product that was I think far superior than anything that we had, ever experienced it say the lock portion of it was so when I sat down. [6:36] Early early days of the idea I sat down with my dad and I was like I got this idea for a sock company, yeah expecting him to be like that’s one of the worst ideas you’ve ever had but do you think I’m leaving your godfather was in the sock business for 40 years and I know that you did really well by himself can’t go talk to him, so I called him up and it turns out that in the late eighties and early nineties use presidency of Gold Toe, I’ve been left Gold Toe to start a private label stock manufacturing company which ended up being one of the largest private label stock manufacturing companies in the world so. Falling into kind of expertise and somebody who literally knows every single supplier of socks in the world and knows how to manufacture any type of sock in the world, was a massive advantage and something that I totally totally a tribute to lock, the component that wasn’t luck that I think once we started the R&D and design phase, with the fact that we had no bias and no snow we weren’t skewed by any preconceived notions in manufacturing and I remember. Very vividly talking with one of our manufacturing Partners I said to them I said I want to put a seamless toe on this athletic sock. They’re like why would you want to do that like that’s wildly expensive you only find seamless toes, ano Italian made dress socks because they’re so thin you can actually feel the same they’re like on athletic socks you can’t feel the same cuz they’re cushiony was like I can feel the same like I want to go to see what’s the weather like. [8:06] Do you know how expensive that is on a per pair of socks be so it’s like I don’t know you know how much and they’re like $0.10 a pair and I was like. [8:13] 10 senses like I can makeup 10 said that my godmother was like no I used to make socks for less than a penny a pair whose like this is why they’re pushing back on this but I think the fact that we were. Truly designing this coming at it from a consumer’s perspective, and not coming out of her manufacturing or you know resellers perspective of oh well we need to create a product that has this much margins that weekend we didn’t think about it we were just like let’s create the best product possible, and see if people like it and so that’s how we came to me. Jason: [8:42] That’s awesome and I feel like in some ways that’s not an uncommon story that the disruptors one of their their core advantages as they don’t have the bias of all these preconceived notion of the the people that did them before in some ways II, I feel like I’ve heard similar iterations of that story from like the Tommy John guys or you know a bunch of other even Dollar Shave Club like where, if you would come from Joe at it probably would have been harder to imagine Reinventing the. Product like that exactly so early on the model was that we’re going to put the socks on a website and sell them direct-to-consumer and was that, the the idea why did you guys ever kick around being a wholesale supplier of socks or. David: [9:30] I mean so rainy and I came out of the online media business so the online space was I think what we knew and I think we were the most comfortable I believe we also thought that you know early days we, United States early days when 2013 doesn’t exactly feel like early days of the internet when you think about it it’s only e-commerce is only been around for you 20 + years or so yo it’s still relatively early days I think we thought that you know. For building a brand around another wise commoditized product like a pair of socks we we need the, the unlimited landscape and palette by which the internet affords to tell deep and enriching stories and produce really great content which is ultimately what builds great brands are at least we believe build brick builds great brands, and similar let you know it’s like the Dollar Shave comes over all that you know I think having. The ability to use things like video and deeply Rich photographic content and copy in a way to talk about a really small product that on a store shelf, would only got you know what to in of packaging space to tell a really how do you tell a deep story like that and so I think. [10:48] Are whole thesis early on was, let’s see let’s put our content in a brand that’s why we launched an Indiegogo we created a 3-minute video about the socks I only like I don’t know if you’re going to sit through a 3-minute video about Sox ultimately they did and I think the product in and our brand resonated, with the customer base and I think that’s kind of sad our path and I think we always talked about. [11:14] Wholesale at some point we just launched a small wholesale Partnerships last year with Nordstrom’s Dick’s and QVC. But I think it wasn’t I think we felt like there was so much room and still believe they’re still so much room to grow, online where you kind of really got to have that one-on-one relationship with the customer around and otherwise. Forgotten or not thought about product like a pair of socks. Jason: [11:41] Yeah and Sumter is one of the things a lot of DTC companies talk about as one of them obviously, is your name higher margins when you’re selling direct to Consumer but a big thing is customer intimacy and you get like the immediate feedback what what’s tough customers like what they didn’t like you hear directly from the voice of customer inside there’s always this hypothesis we can iterate our product faster we can make our product better because we’re directly connected to the customer as opposed to just turn feedback from the Walmart by or something curious if that’s marketing speaker that’s true why are your sock the same as they were the day they want or have you have they evolved in integrated based on customer feedback. David: [12:21] I mean I think for us I mean it’s it’s not marketing-speak I think a lot of the. The ways that the company is involved and you know I wouldn’t say that we we changed our core product in a whole lot of ways. I mean without without any sort of you guys think we’ve nailed it I think we got it pretty right but things like. Jason: [12:44] He’s doing a little dance while he’s saying that just so you know. David: [12:46] I remember one one very distinct moment through customer service we kept getting a lot of Outreach from people saying why don’t you make socks that are size 13 to 15. Or like extra large that’s got to be a small market for us you know who’s really going to buy them. And we were like now is put it on hold us but I’ll hold it like customer service to be like we keep getting request for extra large socks when I okay fine will produce a small number of extra large socks, in kind of summer are course I also, and it ended up representing 10% of our overall business I mean in the in the industry on a whole I think it represents someone like three to 4%. But I didn’t because we were there listening to the market and then serving that market where owning a much larger share of that because we’re producing a product. Foreign otherwise probably over over seen part of the demographic it’s that was one instance and then another one in the incense is wise we, earlier cuz I’m sure you hear from a lot of other d2c brands or Scrappy so like all of our photo shoots for basically like. Me and my other co-founders we happen to be for white males and we got a lot of feedback from from customers of color being like. Yeah why don’t you give him. Jason: [14:07] Why can we get a good looking feet in that yeah yeah. David: [14:09] Baphomet why don’t you representing African-American feed or or or more people of color and we were like you’re absolutely right we should you know it wasn’t something that. We had really thought about but we took that feedback and then immediately our next photo shoot we have wide range of diversity and and now it still continues to be one of the pillars of all of our photo shoots and content going for is it we we always learned from an eye of inclusive inclusive and diversity which I don’t leave our socks around ass or shelf I don’t know if we would ever, if we ever would have gotten that feedback all the way back to us but listen to our customers and having that relationship with them we can react and say like yeah. We talked up on that one we oversaw it like shame on us will fix it but we can’t we have the ability to fix it pretty rapidly going forward, and the response we get back from those customers is like, the extra large like I can’t believe you listen to me you were going to buy a ton and then you know the people who are proactive on the photo shoot stuff, they wrote back at me and be like wow thanks for listening to me and and implementing change. Jason: [15:13] Yeah you know it that’s interesting cuz again I feel like I’ve heard that similar story for my Andy Dunn bonobos and it’s like the exciting take away from that for me is. The because we never had the relationship with that brand that was sitting on the shelf to even care. And said they tasted like that a better connection with you give you feedback might have started off as a negative that it turned into this this positive opportunity to get closer to the customer. So first place I can buy this oxygen to go go I’m guessing you’re going to tell me you were oversubscribed and that was a wildly successful launch. And so the back in 2013 you got all right now I got to stand up a website to sell these things and in 2013 it might not have been totally obvious what the best way to do that was so I’m just I know you’re not the CTO but I’m just curious. Did you guys decide to build your own site from scratch did you find Shopify back then and you remember what you did. David: [16:09] Yeah so I actually had the fortunate nature of two of my co-founders were former creative agency guys so. Jason: [16:17] Hold that against him as a creative agency guy. David: [16:20] It’s been a it’s been a massive massive advantage that have them on our team so they both built design number of websites for clients in the past so it wasn’t. It wasn’t that foreign to us and I think that having worked at this Media company we put a lot of microsites and kind of manage that aspect for four different clients as well, so at the time we were like well we want to be an Enterprise company one day so you know obviously going to go with Magento because Magento runs out of the enterprise software and they had Magento community in Shopify was, not I mean they didn’t have + when we started and it’s amazing to see how how much they’ve grown over the years but. Probably one of the worst mistakes we made was not launching on Shopify to begin with you have a Gen 2 ended up being a bear super resource-intensive you know, from all of this press bike so we got on Today Show Good Morning America Shark Tank every time our website would crash and it wasn’t until we got on Shopify eventually, that we’ve never experienced any of that pain going forwards I’m a big big big Choppa by fan. [17:33] But yeah I mean it wasn’t signed up we would put up with magenta community site within about 30 days post our Indiegogo campaign we really wanted to capitalize on queue for sales that year and yeah I was Bruce. Relatively easy against again again borrowing against some of the. [17:54] Bumps along the way I think managing managing the site was not something that was super foreign to us. Jason: [18:00] Sure sure and don’t beat yourself up I feel like the path forward was very much not clear in 2013 if you like them I feel like the options of four for the incubation stage of clear. David: [18:12] I couldn’t afford demandware and so. Jason: [18:14] Fast forward your next problem what you should be on when you’re selling a billion dollars a year and socks like the answer is unclear at the moment to buy, but that’ll be a first world problem I think to solve so then remind me how far along you were when you went on Shark Tank. David: [18:30] I so we were fourteen months at 11:13 months old so we launched in August of 13 and R episode. Aired September of 2014, they did reach out to us in April that it’s our Indiegogo campaign I think one of the things most people don’t know is that there is an actually there is actually an active casting department at Shark Tank which is. After being on it an hour and I watch the show pretty regularly I now see you there like yeah we had a successful Kickstarter I’m like they found them. Jason: [19:09] Fishing they weren’t that what they didn’t stumble upon. David: [19:10] So so what are the tips of your they want to get on Shark Tank have a really successful Indiegogo and Kickstarter campaign cuz that’s where they look to reach out to us an April kind of thought of it as like a laugh to begin with her like really like we want to do that like, like I guess what’s the harm and went to the went to the interviewing process and you created the videos and flew out there and film and then you fill him in there like. [19:36] Cool with you may or may never hear from you may or may not ever hear from us again if you do will let you know like a week or two before your episode airs, don’t plan on anything basically in the meantime run your business is normal and so we were in the middle of fundraising at that time and so, no I was like man if we are going to be on Shark Tank like, I want to be able to like use this as leverage to like raise a better valuation but ultimately we closed the round about four weeks before the episode aired we got the call and then I cure episodes good are in 2 weeks not a whole lot you can do at that point we staffed up significantly on customer service cuz we just did it now luckily I talked to my friend over Nick over at plated who been on and he was like Overstock customer service he’s like that’s the one thing like that you can actually do before you, go on air everything else is he can’t buy more inventory can’t fix the website you know just going to kind of cross your fingers and hope it all goes well, so yeah we hired I think 30 customer service people and ended up I think’s going up to like 50 that weekend cuz it was just so overwhelming. Jason: [20:51] It’s in his crazy that you get so little notice there’s an earlier iteration of that phenomenon like Oprah’s West Wendover used to be on and literally by the the end of Oprah’s run she had a full-time team that just helped those aren’t for entrepreneurs like Harden their business to get ready for the show airing because. She put them out of business. David: [21:13] Yeah yeah you can actually crush a business. Jason: [21:15] Intermountain my senses shark tank is a lot more there now then it sounds like like I do like that you get more notice than 2 weeks now is that not true or okay. David: [21:23] I think so I mean at least not from what I what I hear look at the end of the day ABC is trying to reduce the television show. I think they obviously have interest set you know they want to see their their entrepreneurs succeed but at the end of the day they have to protect. They’re their IP and make sure that nothing leaks in advance and yeah they really want to control you know. What businesses are going to be on in and in the messaging around then I think, there’s probably too much liability on there and 4 if they tell you too far in advance is probably going to lie that you’re going to tell somebody and then it’s going to end up in the Press somehow like I think the Press would really give a shit about, like cool your man with long with nine other brands but. You know I hope you know I hope no like ill will against them and neither our interests are two different things but we’re trying to run a business and they’re going to reduce television show. Is partner’s past Shark Tank ABCs been incredible I mean you really do become part of the ABC Family when you when you close a deal with a shark in, you know you got on Good Morning America you get on The View and they put products in you know the Bachelor and dancing with the stars and they do a lot of cross-promotion across their platforms. [22:43] So they’ve been they’ve been really fantastic since them but in the early days they’re just like you got to run your business. Cuz I also think they don’t want it cuz I’ve also advised the number of other. Jason: [22:54] Oh yeah don’t ramp up like you’re going to die. David: [22:57] And I have to say that like I’ll say you have to prepare for the best-case but expect the worst. Because I’ve seen people who bought hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of inventory and then they do like $10,000 and say us. It’s no telling what it’s not like Oprah where I think it’s a little bit more Oprah endorses it it’s probably going to go through the roof if you go on Shark Tank with. Alarm clock that fries bacon how many of those are really going to sell. Jason: [23:26] One right here but I take your point. David: [23:27] I volunteer. Jason: [23:31] Yeah I tell you I tell you get it I know you’re in the ABC family so feel free not to, but like I feel like early on there were some entrepreneurs they were smart enough to say hey this is a great customer acquisition opportunity and I don’t really care if I get a deal and I feel like one of the the secret things that that ABC is done to combat that is they now like they charge a piece of equity just to be on the. David: [23:53] They don’t actually anymore now so they did that for the first five seasons but actually, Mark I think threatened to walk off the show because he felt like it was to turn good businesses from coming on the show right cuz if you got a, 10 or 20 million dollar business you’re not going to walk on this phone and give up Equity car blondes without knowing really what the outcome is going to be in so. Look I think the way that they try to combat that. [24:22] I think anybody will realize and admit I mean I could M you even being on it yeah it’s a great obviously exposure opportunity but what I will tell you in the research that I did going on to the show. From the like six or seven brands that I talk to. The people who ended up getting deals ended up having higher success rates from immediately you know airing the episode than those that don’t I think there is a little bit of that Oprah effect where the customer validates. The product or the business if a shark actually invest in it versus if they down is a truss a month, I’m sure there’s probably a number of cases where people have seen Monumental success Following the show just from the exposure from our standpoint we were really like we want to create it we want to do a deal because we know that all kind of guarantee higher degree of success once we are and then also say following that being a part of the ABC family and then kind of the value that we’ve gotten since then and obviously having a shark in our corner, yeah I certainly certainly paid for itself. Jason: [25:29] That’s awesome and I just wanted something which I truly appreciate so remind us you were funded and who who was your. Daymond John who sort of in the space so that was, probably an aspirational shark to get I always chuckle in this particularly I feel like comes to play with like Robert and Mark is. I have a sentence that like in general the sharks are looking for good deals right like inside other very often is an argument that that you should give away more Equity than you might to. Traditional funding source and part of their argument is always we’re going to bring all this support and expertise and technical help and and Mars always oh and I’ll take care of all your website and all that stuff and as we now know from falling a bunch of these usually what that means is on the throw you on shopping and I’m like. That could be good advice I’m not sure how much Equity I would want to give away for that advice alone so I’m always curious to hear from sharks that they feel like they’re the they got more value than just the cash from there, there shark. David: [26:35] I mean in our case it’s really been a level of mentorship you know I think Damon will be the first to admit and he always says he gives us a ton of accolades he’s like let these guys understand e-commerce way better than I do you know he understands the wholesale and brand-building side of the world but, there were moments where you’re we were talking about going in the new product categories are going into wholesale and having him as a sounding board. And I think that that’s why each of the relationships are super unique thing in our relationship it’s been. Mutually beneficial because it we were two business guys that come from startup world would come from the online background can we knew how to build a brand. We need to kind of build and scale online we had to do digital marketing so we weren’t there calling him every step of the way being like how do we do this how do we do this how do we do this how to do and in some instances you know I think there are. More inventors are than entrepreneurs or like I came up with this really cool idea and think of my garage. Are the first thing about starting a business and for them the advice of go on top of eyes like they wouldn’t even know which I was I was so it’s hard to. Argue you know somebody doesn’t know something and they got to a path of there with the path of least resistance. Yeah what is the value. Jason: [28:01] It’s a view from an expensive mistake like absolutely, and I think it’s so a I sit there with a box of popcorn and risking no personal Capital heckling that show all the time and one of the things I feel like is really involved is all of their perspectives about, the value of various channels right now if you like early on it was like oh you might do direct-to-consumer until you could get a wholesale but whole sales only way to get scale and I feel like more recently and I’m like damn John in particular he’s reference did he learn from you guys and I feel like like I said there was at least one show where he mentioned like as a result of my experience with people like you, I’m now a lot more weary about that wholesale model and a lot less excited about it and I think it even says he’s liked it at his own business, based on some of this morning so that’s it like you should be getting some Equity back I think that’s when he calls I’ll tell him. [28:55] Yeah so so that is totally awesome. One of the things that we see with a lot of direct-to-consumer companies is based on your value proposition there’s a certain Market out there that’s really easy to acquire right in. That’s says the market could while they vary between different kinds of businesses. Whatever it is you launch you grow really fast you get to that point like we’re in the old world if you’re opening Gap stores it might have taken you 5 or 10 years to acquire all the customers that were predisposed to love you today you get all those customers in the first 6 months and so you get this nice first Spike but then most companies, hit this Plateau where the new customers stop being quite so easy to acquire and so I’m always curious for for folks like yourself of kind of, in my perspective gone by that first raunch like like did you go through that and then what what if you had to do and how do you think about things differently about acquiring customers today than you did back in your Indiegogo Shark Tank like. David: [29:59] Yeah so how how much time do I have okay. Jason: [30:03] The recorder will be out for 12 hours. David: [30:05] It’s a great question I think I think it’s obviously something that any d2c brand is constantly thinking about right when is this is when is this going to run out I think for us you know. There are there are number of levers that we continue to Paul that allow us to continue to acquire customers profitably on first purchase and that’s always been our kind of marketing. Principal and guidelines from day one is a we were never going to chase LTV you saw what it did other companies you know you saw that over paying on customers early on that you thought we’re going to repeat didn’t repeat yo ended up tanking the company sue you are always thinking okay as long as we can focus on some of the core metrics that will define success in the business which are. [30:52] Produce a high margin products as long as you got high margin then you can you’ve got a lot of dollars to work with then contribution margin on on aov so if we start to reach a plateau in terms of being able to acquire that customer how can we raise a OVI you know one of the key things that we did for the beginning we used to be a singles only company that we moved the packs the day that we moved to pack sorry you if you went from $36 to $60 since then we’ve introduced higher-priced product so we’ve got Merino wool and you know ski socks and bar product mixes as is grown from a merchandising perspective than our aov is like $86 so we’re constantly finding ways to combat, yo the inevitable growth of cost-per-acquisition on a customer base is so this year when we introduce a new product categories that all have a much higher price point hopefully will raise its over the $100 mark, simultaneously we’re always looking to optimize channels and I think one of the things that people are people under value, or they don’t think about and it’s one of the things I constantly advised some of the early-stage startups that I either investing or mentor. [32:03] Is the power of creative. Really really really good creative can actually lower CPAs sum when we introduced to our our million pair video campaign original you’re like okay this is just me a thank you to our customer base will produce this video not really expected to go anywhere and then our CMO is like, I want to test this in marketing or like okay fine potestas in marketing but it’s always like a 2 minute long video or like no way this thing is going to work online, it’s scaled so rapidly we were getting like CPAs in like the $9 for a few months were getting like low team CPS, are the time when we are averaging a thing you are average CP is probably 40 or 50 bucks the time significantly drop that campaign ran. Over a year until it started to see fatigue I think that videos to date is over a hundred and fifty million views probably attributable to close to, 10 to 15 million dollars of Revenue off of that one single piece of creative and so. [33:10] That was that was a real eye-opener for us we’re like how we need to constantly be reinvesting in in creative and sweet built out this. Full basically internal agency model which is nice cuz two co-founders from Regency people you have a lot of that skill-set internally but we develop. So much creative more constantly pumping it into the marketing field you know and 90% of it. [33:35] This garbage you know it doesn’t work but the 10% that does well you kind of start to distill down and distilled down into still down to the power I think of e-commerce is that, are being able to see when you put money behind an ad be able to see what performing and why it’s performing in on what audience base is it performing well then you can try to replicate that across similar audiences and then tweaked it, and as long as that engine and you start to build you know that engine up and start a leopard the data you can start to become really really smart about the way. We also have to be willing to take risks is one piece of creative that we came up with last year our laundry back guarantee we’re basically said. Never lose it one of a pair of bombas in the laundry will replace it for free did horribly on Facebook. And our CMO is like well I think this is such a great campaign I got such great press coverage like let’s put it on TV. And I was like why are we spending any more money on this piece of creative it did terribly on Facebook why do you think it’s going to do well on TV, and miraculous agents really really well on TV so you know I think the ability to kind of create content tested iterated but also be able to take risks on where you’re publishing that content, with an eye again towards those metrics. [34:52] Is for us would what is allowed us to continue and also diversifying channels I think that was the other thing I think realizing. Early on it take 90% of all of our spend was on Facebook, our budget continues to double every year on Facebook by Facebook I think represents 40% of our overall spend today. [35:13] TV represents a large power podcast audio direct mail I mean every single of these channels add up. Yeah direct Mills great CPAs hard to scale it you know it doesn’t scale like TV in Facebook, but it gives us a really really competitive CPA is so having the overall mix bring the overall cost for a cost for a position. Facebook is higher these days but as a blended mix that’s all we really care about while we also in one of the other advantages of our businesses, kasaks a replenishment item, naturally and we have a very very high repeat Ray and repeat is what ultimately drives the profitability of the of the company, Zack gives us the ability to reinvest into new channels and. Yeah I got not every businesses as fortunate or set up the way that you know our margin structure is or some of the repeat rates but. What’s a lot of Cisco. Jason: [36:09] That’s why you would spend some time picking the right product categories suicide note that that seems like one path to success has to be really smart about your Performance Marketing and and do great executions and really agonized unlock trade even try lots of different things and learned that’s one way to go is to just spend like a drunken sailor and then I hope to get a choir to go public before anyone notices so I’m just saying for listeners to pads you choose. David: [36:39] I would recommend against the ladder pass. Jason: [36:41] I would too but like more. David: [36:42] Super super stressful yeah I think those are fewer and farther between I think if you look at the Acquisitions that Walmart made by mod fast forward 70 million dollars and they raised 75, I don’t know I don’t think anybody really did well on that deal. Jason: [37:00] I think the only one that wasn’t a value acquisition was yet for sure. David: [37:04] Yeah I mean I owe dark bonobos was was in there somewhere. Jason: [37:07] I think it was close to like One X Revenue. Which it like I would argue I’d like to get a lot more but that’s where you may not be closed yet what we shall see. Once I take you didn’t mention but I feel like I have not been in a in a car in the last year and not have you remind me about the seam in my socks is it is radio or really affected part of the. David: [37:33] Killer yeah yeah podcast Radio audio serious all the way across the board that continues to be one of our largest growing, are fastest growing channels by spend I think we tripled, tripled spending audio over the last two years represent probably 15% of our overall spend now. Yeah we can meet at 8 it’s a little bit more hit or miss I think it’s like TV and then you’ve got to find the channels that resonate for you and there’s not, unless we will find a podcast that does really well for us and then I think we saturated over time and then it stops performing so it’s kind of move on audio two kind of mining for gold tonight might find you know one that does really well you dig really deep and then the other one the other mine dries up and you got to find something else but across-the-board audio does pretty well but it’s time-consuming for sure cuz you got him that it you know it’s you got to create the spots. Jason: [38:35] Podcast in particular one thing that podcast from notorious for his like the attribution model is kind of tough. You Tennessee products that are like really fast direct sell direct all the action and it’s usually you’re cracking attribution based on like a URL or promo code is that how you guys look at podcast or do you feel like you have some sense for. Building in that kind of thing. David: [39:00] Like if anybody I think I think if there was anybody who figures out how to do multi Channel or multi-touch attribution in e-commerce well I think they would. Yeah I think they would be the next multibillion-dollar company honestly we were lying on a pretty easy. [39:18] Way we do we do how’d you hear about us surveys and yeah we cross metric that against the data coming through the coupon codes for the sights but, what you’re fine and yeah I think the big maybe it’s not a big secret but I think, what most companies do is the same offer that you’ll get by Just landing on their website is the same offer that the promote within a podcaster on a radio show. So what we end up getting is a lot of people just type in bombas. Com and see the promo offer 20% off your first order and then they just go through that. What we find is we got probably, a four times after bution on the how did you hear about a survey when we overlay that data so if it was $100 CPA office specific podcast will come down about 25 bucks. Once we kind of overlay that how did here but you know we’re in so many channels now it starts to become really challenging like did they first learn about us some podcast was that the last one touch point of entry into how many times today you know see us on Facebook or television or you know Direct Mail which was the channel that ultimately got them over the hump this is why were I think. [40:32] Monitor Channel by Channel acne or cost-per-acquisition to look at efficiency I think the thing at the end of the day that we really really care about it’s just overall cost per acquisition across all channels that’s that’s truly the one metric that allows us to know whether we’re on the right path or not. Jason: [40:48] Got it so that ends up being your sort of next best dollar calculus is is customer acquisition cost with that makes perfect sense that’s a perfect to my next question you mentioned earlier in the show that you’re just starting to pile at some some wholesale partners and I’m curious. Are you thinking of that is a separate channel in separate piano and just evaluating the ROI from that channel on its own or are you thinking about, that exposure in those those high-traffic retailers as a customer acquisition marketing tactic as well. David: [41:20] Yeah I think it’s I think it’s a mix of both I think that when I. You know when I eat when I look at the future of the company and we have plans to be a billion dollar company in the next 10 years. I don’t think that the rate at which e-commerce is growing, will we be able to necessarily do be able to do a billion dollars of Revenue just online and look if you like fashion over or proving that you know you can do seven hundred million dollars of Revenue online cuz I got things up first for a, branded only retailer Nan Marketplace retailer to be doing those kind of numbers I think I think more and more brands of get there but. When I look at our strategy and kind of diversifying where we’re going to get growth probably need to be a little bit more strategic about it and not going to put all my eggs in one basket and so I still see you, a large opportunity and also assume there’s a lot of other brands that are in our space I look at Stan’s you know. [42:21] Over a hundred million dollar your company predominantly at wholesale so when I look at that I’m like okay well apart of the market share you know can I take you know how big can bombas be not necessarily competing against ants and when we interview our customers the majority of our customers are coming from Brands like Hanes for the loom your jockey there they’re buying up rather than buying over. And so when I look at how big of a market share those brands have at retail, Mike well if we’re doing this online we surely should be able to carve out a nice little business for us at wholesale that will just add to the revenue stack over all but. [43:00] Interesting lie enough when we launched at Nordstrom’s dicks at Nordstrom’s and Dick’s specifically, we were over indexing pretty significantly against every other sock in the category, and remember I was like I can’t believe you know I knew that we were confident that we were going to be successful at at retail or wholesale but, I didn’t think that we would be two to three times the sell through rate of of the next best-selling sock in the category and I remember sitting out with our private Equity partner and they’re like. Will you realize there’s not another sock brand on the Shelf spending $40 a year on marketing and I was like, all right so I think that we’re benefiting at wholesale from a lot of the radio ads and TV and stuff that we’re thinking is all direct response what is actually having a lift at wholesale as well because there’s brand recognition if you’ll rocking through the store is there yeah maybe they’re listening to us in the car and then they get into a Nordstrom’s like alright that’s the brand I just heard about I’m going to buy a pair of those I don’t think we ever kind of really thought about the the overlap effect. Are online or online marketing I just did Eric Woods would have in the offline world. Jason: [44:14] I’ll put their clothes in the show notes so people can see him, you know you talked about hitting that like billion dollar threshold and you say like how many direct-to-consumer like native brands have gotten a billion dollars and it’s it’s pretty small right, and then you go all right well what about the traditional House of brands that dominate the retail shelf the VF Corp sayings like how many billion dollar brands of a built in the last 10 years smaller so you know where all the new 10 billion billion dollar run rate brands are coming from the retox. It’s cat and Jack its lights to Target to lunch 5 billion dollar brands in the last 2 years Kroger has billion dollar brain is crazy. David: [45:03] Gary Wright coming out of Aeropostale. Jason: [45:06] Yeah so there is this to me there’s something to like. And I don’t like using private label cuz I actually think these new brands are our evolution of private label it’s not just a cheaper version of the national brand on the show. David: [45:20] They put like brand thinking and jolly. Jason: [45:23] Microcytes they do all these things but you think about it what the common denominator of those Brands is. That retailer has the same customer intimacy that our direct-to-consumer brand has they know the customer to have a direct relationship and then they have us the scale visibility and low customer acquisition cost. Retail some you know if or do I give all that infrastructure has already been amortize somewhere else and so it is like I do and I say you like man, part of the equation for digitally native Brands to get to billions of dollars probably means some you know some blend of that that brick-and-mortar presence is. So this is all been great I do just in case I was stupid enough not to ask any of the right question is there anything that you feel like you’ve learned in this run that would surprise new entrepreneurs are new direct to Consumer brands that, that you’d care to share with us. David: [46:21] Yeah I think I think one of the biggest piece of advice that I got really really early on for one of my friends who worked at Tom’s was the. The ability to focus our main focus on a relatively small product set. When I remember when we had done like $500,000 in sales those like we’re killing it Riley sales in her first six months we need to be producing shirts and underwear and sweatpants and sweatshirts and he sat down and he was like. [46:52] We at times is that we sold the first we sold one silhouette in five colors for the first I think like four years I am built like a multi hundred billion dollar company off of that he’s like don’t underestimate. [47:05] How small you are or don’t overestimate how small you are. Compared to like the larger population and we’re over a hundred million dollar brand today and I still and now I’m not surprised by you no bite as much when I meet people in there like oh I don’t know I’ve never heard of bombas before I cuz I was it just like more humbling at this point where I’m I have to assume that nobody else has heard of us despite our size and even though I think that puts it in respect that you can be a brand over a hundred million dollars, go to the middle of the country and ask people at Warby Parker is our guarantee most of them are like I never heard of Warby Parker I think I remember of somewhere and I was like oh Casper mattresses, what’s a Casper mattress and I like right you live outside your like New York in LA and you know some of the bubbles that we live in and yeah these Brands don’t penetrate quite as deeply as you as you may think there are that’s what brands are thing like Target or able to you know it’s been up brands in a much easier it cuz they owned those customer bases across every single Geographic and demographic, Physicians I would say don’t like don’t overestimate. [48:18] Your size and stay focused on the one thing that you do really really really really well and frost I was producing socks and selling them online that’s why we didn’t get distracted by going to wholesale we didn’t get distracted by producing other products here we are five and a half years later we still just sell socks, and I still think that we’ve got hundreds of millions of dollars more Justin our core product category just online. Jason: [48:42] That that is awesome and don’t forget to get out of the New York l a bubble sometimes figure out what the customer in Muskogee wants Muskogee is in Oklahoma, people Walmart frequently talked about like that’s the prototypical Walmart customer at Muscogee random facts on the Jason and Scott show so we’re running out of time I want to get one last question in when you and I are back at the show five years from now you have any sense for how the the market in the world might be different if you have a view for the future of, of Brands and like do we have the same assortment of direct-to-consumer and wholesalers and things that we have today. David: [49:25] I think there will be a might have been anything there’s going to be some consolidation I think I think it would be great if, I think there’s so much efficiency to be had by rolling up some of these e-commerce Brands together by centralizing marketing centralizing back office operations, I think Andy at Walmart that was kind of their you know what he was charged with I’d love to see him pull it off. If not him I think there’s I think somebody should should come into the space and and kind of wrap up a bunch of these big Brands to make them even bigger. [50:02] So that’s what I’m kind of hoping for over the next five years and, I bet you will also start to see I’d like to hopefully see some more Acquisitions in the space that aren’t that better, not billion-dollar Acquisitions right I think you know a hundred million two hundred million dollar Acquisitions for the small the native deodorant company right I think those are, in the end the next round of entrepreneurs that I’m meeting interesting Lee enough are all in the product categories that they’re all developing. Are not sitting down being like I’ve got the next billion-dollar idea I think they’re saying that I mean like, I see an opportunity to carve out a 40 million dollar you know Market in this direct-to-consumer space and hopefully somebody will hire us for a hundred hundred twenty million dollars and I think that’s the right mindset of this next round of entrepreneurs you don’t need to go out and raised 50 to 300 million dollars of capital to build this Behemoth or and that’s going to take oatmeal a world domination and be the next P&G, yeah I think I think we’ll start to see a little bit more of a fragmented space and smaller smaller fundraises and smaller a relatively smaller acquisitions. Jason: [51:13] Interesting in that lights up. I think we talked about the fact that I got our business can be a great business for a bunch of employees I can solve a consumer problem and the challenges, which businesses in that size is they don’t offer the return on investment for the traditional VC model and so if you build your company based on that VC model like that BC does not want you to see. David: [51:38] We could have a whole nother podcast about vcu’s and where I think their place is in building direct-to-consumer Firenze versatile. Jason: [51:45] So that’s that’s kind of what I was like in the short version of that like you talked about raising less when you say raising less do you think that’s raising last from the traditional funding sources or do you think that’s a newer funding sources. David: [51:59] I mean, you know I use us as an example we were we raised $2000000 to seed funding in 3 million in our and haven’t raised a single dollar ever since we raised four million dollars and total and built a hundred billion dollar company in 5 and 1/2 years at Super profitable. It can be done right you don’t need to go out and raise $50 hundred million dollars to build a hundred billion dollar company is like that that’s like to me is like asinine thing k, answer this next wave entrepreneurs I think they’re looking at margin or looking at cost-per-acquisition they’re looking at contribution, they’re looking at the financial is in a much more surgeries way and they’re also not just looking at online they’re looking at omni-channel they’re being a lot more strategic about how they’re bringing products to Market and you know how they’re acquiring customers and realizing that, there’s a subset of Angel Investors and there’s a new wave I think of you to see entrepreneurs like myself and Andy and you know Jeff reiter and all these other due to see CEOs that are now investing in this next wave of companies and saying you don’t need to go raise 20 million dollars from you no first-round or any of these other big you know no knock on them I just think that. [53:06] They serve a great purpose in writing in funding Technology based companies that require massive amounts of capital that don’t have 90% margin profiles that shouldn’t you know that that don’t generate cash in the first year but like if you’ve gotten retail brands have been being built for the last hundred years without. Massive amounts of VC funding because if your business is set up correctly. [53:31] As a consumer business you should generate profit on your product like it it sounds crazy to be like stating that as a fact today but like your. Fundamentally if you have the right model setup your business should generate cash and that cash at scale should be able to fund growth I don’t know. Jason: [53:50] That’s a wildly controversial position I’m sarcasm fully intended totally agree and I that’s a great place to leave it because we’ve done it again we blown through are a lot of time making some people stay at the gym a little extra long for this episode which I like. David: [54:05] Look at this excerpt Rhapsody. Jason: [54:06] Exactly I got nose I need them if folks have some comments or questions about the show feel free to jump on our Facebook page will continue the conversation there as always. If you really enjoy this episode we sure appreciate if you jump on iTunes and get us that five star review Dave if folks want to connect with bombas or follow some more of your thought leadership is there a place on the internet that it’s best to hang out are you a Twitter guy. David: [54:31] I’m not at it I’m actually not a social media user much to my communications Apartments Chagrin but. Jason: [54:38] I can put your mobile phone number in the show note so that would be better. David: [54:40] Founder it’s out there somewhere I get a lot of random phone calls from. Bender’s but no I mean by myself, we’ve got to buy me something on Instagram that’s what the kids are using these days but I’ll plug that we’ve got 55 open positions the company right now, incredible company culture so if you’re interested in a job in New York go on our career pages and definitely. Jason: [55:07] That is awesome and that that best Pat there is the Gear Page on bombas.com will put that in the show notes as well Dave really appreciate your time and really enjoyed our conversation until next time happy commercing.

My guest this week is Randy Goldberg, co-founder of both the Pop-Up Flea and Bombas.Randy and I discuss how he went from blogging about menswear to starting the Pop-Up Flea and building Bombas (a company on track for 100M in revenue this year) all while giving away 10 million pairs of socks to the homeless.**BombasThe Pop-Up Flea**This episode is sponsored by Proper Cloth-- Save $20 off your first purchase with promo code BLAMO**

Join astrologer Randy Goldberg on the evening of the Uranus Square Pluto, as it makes the 7th of 7 exact squares.  Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/ Here is his recent interveiw in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/when-mercurys-in-retrograde-madness-rules-or-so-the-astrologers-say/2015/02/03/5d4570c2-abde-11e4-ad71-7b9eba0f87d6_story.html#sthash.9c9yNsiT.dpuf

Join host Randy Goldberg on his show Science of Light as he talk about the astrology chart of Leonard Nimoy. Goldberg is a master at chart rectification when the time is not know as in this case. Astrological Scholar  Isaac Starkman agrees that the chart needs to be changed to pm, see http://www.astro.com/astro-databank/Nimoy,_Leonard. His corrected birth info is March 26, 1931 8:34pm Boston, Mass. Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. Randy will be discussing a variety of holistic and deep topics. For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/ Here is his recent interveiw in the Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/when-mercurys-in-retrograde-madness-rules-or-so-the-astrologers-say/2015/02/03/5d4570c2-abde-11e4-ad71-7b9eba0f87d6_story.html#sthash.9c9yNsiT.dpuf  

Join host Randy Goldberg on his new show Science of Light as he interviews the founder of FlexAware, Steven Shafarman. FlexAware® is • A new approach to fitness and exercise, • Effective gentle movements that feel good, • For people of all ages and all health conditions, • Grounded in science, including current neuroscience, • Based on the way young children naturally learn and move. Whether you are fit and active, mostly sedentary, disabled with chronic pain, or a professional athlete, you can benefit from FlexAware. FlexAware movements are pleasant. There’s no equipment, so it’s easy to begin and easy to resume after a break. You can do it anywhere and anytime: on the floor or a bed, sitting or standing at your desk, walking down the street. FlexAware is a sustainable approach to fitness. A few minutes can bring real benefits: • Relieve pain, • Recover from stress, • Be more alert and focused, • Improve breathing, posture, and walking, • Increase flexibility, strength, stamina, and vitality, • Enhance skills in sports, dance, yoga, and other activities More info at http://flexaware.com/

Join host Randy Goldberg on his new show Science of Light as he talk about the astrology of Now. He ends to show with reading some poems by the mystic poet Kabir. Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. Randy will be discussing a variety of holistic and deep topics For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/  

Join Science of Light show, Randy Goldberg, as he explains the planetary system called Dasha periods in Vedic Astrology. During every phase of your life, you will have a different ruling planet, that will influence how that chapter of your life turns out. This Vimshottari Dasha system covers a 120 year cycle that we will only experience part of depending on where we are born in to it.  Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/ Check out his interview in last week's Washington Post!  http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/when-mercurys-in-retrograde-madness-rules-or-so-the-astrologers-say/2015/02/03/5d4570c2-abde-11e4-ad71-7b9eba0f87d6_story.html     

Join host Randy Goldberg on his new show Science of Light as he talk about the nakshatras. The nakshatras are one of the oldest references we have to astrology from the Rig Veda, dating back about 5,000 years ago. The Vedas are the religious scriptures of the great seers and sages of India. The nakshatras are like the zodiacal signs but more specific. Their meanings are derived from the constellations, fixed stars and the mythology behind these portions in the sky. They are rich in meaning and have ruling deities that reveal the stories or myths that bring to life the symbology referred to in our own lives. Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. Randy will be discussing a variety of holistic and deep topics For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/  

Join host Randy Goldberg on his new show Science of Light. Tonight we will be listening to part 2 of a rare archived talk given by Kathrin Asper entitled "Home is where we share and care." Kathrin Asper is a Jungian analyst in private practice as well as a training analyst and lecturer at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. She is the author of many books including The Abandoned Child Within: On Losing and Regaining Self-Worth For more info see: http://ordinaryordinary.blogspot.com/2007/11/jung-love-review-kathrin-aspers.html http://www.amazon.com/Kathrin-Asper/e/B001K6LVV0 Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/

Join host Randy Goldberg on his new show Science of Light. Tonight we will be listening to a rare archived talk given by Kathrin Asper entitled "Home is where we share and care." Kathrin Asper is a Jungian analyst in private practice as well as a training analyst and lecturer at the C. G. Jung Institute in Zurich, Switzerland. She is the author of many books including The Abandoned Child Within.Being-in Oneself - Being-in-the-World: Finding a "Home" and Regaining Self-Worth, was also delivered in Oxford, UK, 1993, at the annual conference of 'The Guild of Pastoral Psychology' (www.guildofpastoralpsychology.org.uk). I was a Trustee of this long-established organisation (founding patron C.G.Jung) for well over 20 years, including occasions when Kathrin Asper addressed the members. For your, and/or listeners', information, this talk is published by the Guild in pamphlet form (24 pages): Guild Lecture No: 246. Even with overseas postage it is not expensive, and given scarcity of her books, provides an excellent introduction.  To order, go to the website, click on Contact, where you will find Diana Grace-Jones listed near the bottom, as 'Guild Pamphlets Distributor'. You can find out costs & make orders by clicking on her name.Judith Keyston Lewes, Sussex.  UK 

Join host Randy Goldberg on his new show Science of Light as he talk about Family Constellation therapy.  Here is an article about his Family Constellation work http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/12/married-to-a-memory/ Randy Goldberg  is a graduate of the DC Hellinger Institute, and did advanced studies with Heinz Stark from Germany. He facilitates Family Constellation therapy for individuals and groups. Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/  

Join host Randy Goldberg on his show Science of Light as he talk to his guest Dr Anatole, founder of Modern Seers. http://www.modernseers.org/  Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. Randy will be discussing a variety of holistic and deep topics For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/

Join host Randy Goldberg on his show Science of Light as he talk about his forecast for 2015. Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. Randy will be discussing a variety of holistic and deep topics For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/  

Join host Randy Goldberg on his new show Science of Light as he talk about the winter Solstice and has a discussion about the differences between Western and Vedic astrology. Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/  

Join host Randy Goldberg on his show Science of Light as he talk about the tension in the air, with the Uranus square to Pluto going exact tonight. Deep change coming to the surface as the shadow side of authority gets exposed and a renewed energy of freedom abounds. Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/  

Join host Randy Goldberg on his new show Science of Light as he talk about developing the relationships you want. Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. Randy will be discussing a variety of holistic and deep topics For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/ Join us in our circle!!!

Join host Randy Goldberg on his new show Science of Light in a rare interview with Kirtan expert Jyoshna La Trobe. She got her PhD in Music from the School of Oriental and African Studies, London and has done post graduate research on the indigenous music and ecstatic performance the 'praise musicians' or kirtaniyas of Rarh, India. (Ancient Bengal). She is a composer, recording artist, from New Zealand, who has produced over a dozen original as well as ethnographic music albums in the past twenty years. More info about her is at www.blog.jyoshna.com  Lots of great kirtan selections can also be found at www.innersong.com Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/  

Join host Randy Goldberg on his new show Science of Light. Listen to the second half of a lecture he gave about Jung. He talks about Alchemy, the ego-self axis, Shadow, active imagination, the process of analysis and becoming whole, Randy is a world renowned vedic astrologer who has been interviewed by CNN, NPR and the Washington post. Using a Jungian archetypal perspective, he integrates both western and vedic astrology. For more on Randy go here: http://www.randygoldberg.org/