Allbirds

“We made probably 30 changes in the 16 months to that first release product.”

“Particularly in this environment where petroleum is really cheap right now, it puts a lot of pressure on a lot of different brands that rely on renewable materials and something that's more expensive. So really, you have to go downstream to connect with the co…”

“When you're trying to sell from a business to business perspective, even if it's a great product, it's a good price. And it has this overwhelmingly positive message around sustainability. The big brands just don't understand how to take that and market it effe…”

“If you look at how Amazon does, even when you're not selling on their channel, enough people have typed in all birds on amazon.com such that there is a lot of knockoffs and other, perhaps you would call it similar looking products. That are now sold through Am…”

“So we view ourselves much more like an innovator than we do a shoe company or a fashion company, or we don't think we're ourselves really as a fashion company at all.”

“You say, do you want a pop up screen on your internet site that says get 10% off for, if you enter your email, you know what that message says to you. It says you're about to get spammed by my company. In exchange for 10% off, it cheapens the experience, so we…”

“Clearly all birds have just raised around to focus on retail expansion, and you can see that these retail stores are profitable in a matter of months. Often they're cost-neutral marketing channels.”

“Allbirds, which is not in our portfolio, but another really fast-growing brand, I think they did a million dollars in their first month of business.”

“There are companies that are scaling even in direct-to-consumer brands, and they're scaling with capital efficiency, you know, invested in Allbirds at Maveron. It's going really well, and they're extremely capital efficient, and customers love it, and they com…”

“If you look at my warden class alone, like the founders of Warby Parker, Harry's, Allbirds all came out of that single class.”

“And so that is the core of where we started the brand. And that's where we're going to bring everything back to with a really sharp clarity for the consumer. And the potential when we do that is going to be pretty significant. So I think in, in, in part, you'r…”

“So we stopped all store growth. We pulled back on some of the wholesale expansion and we then pulled back Probably, I don't know exactly the exact number, but high teens marketing in terms of year over year comparisons on the dollars we spent.”

“I'd say a company that, that is done a really nice job in an area that I take a lot of inspiration from, would probably be Tesla. Which is around performance and quality of a product and an aesthetic and a beauty that delivers in and of itself. And the free gi…”

“We didn't have an athletic positioning at all at that time. And, you know, we were a hundred percent of a casual lifestyle shoe offering in 2019.”

“Something that we have in spades relative to our competition, no matter what their size, even if they're many, many billion dollars in size, we have we are leading in terms of the infrastructure and the tech enablement that we've been able to bring into the bu…”

“The conception of what productivity means is far too narrow. And particularly in an industry like mine, where Creativity and physical products are central to what we do that not being together is is impossible.”

“And I think if you think about what's happened from over the last couple of years with this, like maximal build in the trends of how shoe companies have been coming to the consumer marketplace and the fact that now quiet luxury is really coming back and people…”

“And I think we were in the unfortunate position of not being structured in a way that, that could capitalize exactly on the dramatic change that had happened in that world.”

“We still have less than 15% aided brand awareness, meaning only 15% of the US population knows that all birds exist.”

“We are a product company first and foremost, and we need to tell amazing stories around those products. That, that is what we are. And we happen to exist In a category where style and fashion is incredibly important. That, that is how I think about the company…”

“As we brought in now into the wholesale marketplace in the U S and eventually in, in the international geos that we serve, we're going to grow awareness. We're going to reach a lot more consumers and They're going to fall in love just like the early, early gro…”

“So I've sold extraordinarily little at the IPO. I sold nothing. And then after that I've sold incredibly little.”

“And so it was a Sisyphean exercise for me where I realized that while the technology existed, the consumers wanted it. It was, there's no compromise offering was there for the taking and brands could not position it correctly.”

“And if we just get really good, really, really good at just a few shoes, we can be a billion dollars in sales and go well beyond that.”

“What we've said to the market, we've got to be pretty consistent with that on your podcast as well. Is, is that will be cashflow and EBITDA profitable in 20, 25.”

“And as a result, the sales have declined this year for the first time in the history of the company.”

“And most of the people who are closest to the central aspects of product creation and design and marketing are coming in for four days a week.”

“Because the whole industry is structured like this before we started was, you know, 70, sometimes 80% wholesale distributed.”

“We now have a brand that's, you know, close to three hundred million dollars in revenue.”

“Over the last two years has been a layer of anxiety and stress that has been much more than previous in my life.”

“We've had a number of companies in the footwear space and the kind of ecosystem of apparel and footwear more broadly come to us and ask us if we were interested in selling.”

“Company went public at 3.75 billion. Today it's sitting at 127.”

“We've, I've never told someone to sell or not sell.”

“I often talk about with our leaders that what they bring in, Is deeply needed and deeply respected, but we need to think about it as a reference book, not a playbook.”

“If along that journey the public markets don't see the value that we're creating, and there's a big gap between the value that we are creating and what the enterprise value is of the company, then I think it's prudent to consider all options. And we have a boa…”

“It went public at 3.8 billion, and it's now one hundred and twenty million.”

“It was acquired by Almex for thirty-nine million dollars.”