The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 43 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Allbirds Co-Founder: Amazon Profits Off Knockoffs Targeting Allbirds Search Terms
“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…”
Joey Zwillinger: Allbirds will refocus on its core active lifestyle category
“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…”
Zwillinger: Allbirds will consider going private if market valuation gap persists
“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…”
Zwillinger: Allbirds will be cash flow and EBITDA profitable in 2025
“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.”
Zwillinger: Remote Work Is Impossible for Physical Product Companies
“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.”
Zwillinger: Almost 100% of new shoe brand discovery happens in physical stores
“For the 83% and for any of the discovery, almost a hundred percent of the discovery of new brands, you really want to go try things on people.”
Zwillinger: Nike selling on Amazon is a canary in the coal mine for footwear brands
“I think Nike just announced that they're going to start to sell on Amazon as well, which I think is quite a bellwether for the industry and a bit of a, if you want to use the other analogy, a canary in the coal mine for what is to come.”
Zwillinger: Physical consumer brands cannot rely on minimum viable product strategy
“I just think it's a little less extreme than with a web product and the way that, that Reed might say, put your minimum viable product out there, get feedback and build it with a consumer product and a brand. Particularly one, you know, if you look at the grow…”
Zwillinger: Stock market moves are largely driven by trading algorithms
“A large part of it is just algorithms.”
Zwillinger: Less than 15% of Americans know Allbirds exists
“We still have less than 15% aided brand awareness, meaning only 15% of the US population knows that all birds exist.”
Zwillinger: Allbirds is a product company first, not tech or fashion
“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…”
Zwillinger: Allbirds leads multi-billion-dollar competitors in tech infrastructure
“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…”
Zwillinger: Allbirds was not structured to capitalize on pandemic demand
“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.”
Joey Zwillinger predicts drop in consumer spending over next six months
“The consumer is in a more delicate and fragile situation than people understand and that it's going to be more difficult and there's going to be less spending than people think in the coming six months.”
Zwillinger: Big Brands Cannot Effectively Market Sustainable Material Innovations B2B
“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…”
Zwillinger: Incumbent brands couldn't effectively position green technology products
“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.”
Zwillinger: Quiet luxury trend will be a tailwind for Allbirds
“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…”
Zwillinger: Domain expertise should be a reference book, not a playbook
“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.”
Zwillinger: Business cycles do not align with public quarterly reporting
“Businesses don't happen on quarterly cycles, but financial reporting and public markets do.”
Joey Zwillinger: Direct-to-consumer is a distribution channel, not a brand identity
“DTC is a way to do business. There's been great retailers who started this in our industry. If you broaden it beyond footwear into apparel, like the gap in the nineties and Lululemon has done a really wonderful job of being a great DTC company. But they're a p…”
Joey Zwillinger: Allbirds' wholesale expansion will drive consumer awareness and adoption
“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…”
Zwillinger denies ever asking Allbirds investors to sell their shares
“We've, I've never told someone to sell or not sell.”
Zwillinger: An acquisition offer isn't real until paper is in front of you
“If an acquisition offer is a real acquisition offer until the piece of paper is in front of you and you have the opportunity to sign it.”
Zwillinger: Multiple footwear and apparel companies asked to acquire Allbirds
“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.”
Zwillinger: Wealth Beyond Family Financial Security Has Steep Diminishing Returns
“If you're interested in making sure that you can have financial security for yourself and your family, that more than that is not going to be particularly useful to you. Like the diminishing return on that extra dollar is quite, quite significant.”
Joey Zwillinger Sold Zero Shares at Allbirds IPO and Minimal Shares Since
“So I've sold extraordinarily little at the IPO. I sold nothing. And then after that I've sold incredibly little.”
Zwillinger: Allbirds sales declined in 2023 for first time ever
“And as a result, the sales have declined this year for the first time in the history of the company.”
Allbirds Requires Core Product and Marketing Teams In-Office Four Days
“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.”
Zwillinger: Allbirds can achieve $1B+ in sales by focusing on core shoes
“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.”
Zwillinger: Employees tire of brand narrative much faster than consumers do
“Not getting tired of the story that you're telling to consumers before they do, which it takes a long time for consumers to get tired. It's much quicker for employees to get tired.”
Zwillinger: Allbirds aspires to Tesla's strategy of product performance over sustainability
“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…”
Zwillinger: Low Oil Prices Force Renewable Material Companies Direct-To-Consumer
“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…”
Zwillinger: E-commerce discount pop-ups cheapen brand and customer experience
“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…”
Zwillinger: Allbirds is a material innovator, not a fashion company
“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.”
Zwillinger: Allbirds generates close to $300 million in annual revenue
“We now have a brand that's, you know, close to three hundred million dollars in revenue.”
Zwillinger: Footwear industry was 70-80% wholesale before Allbirds
“Because the whole industry is structured like this before we started was, you know, 70, sometimes 80% wholesale distributed.”
Zwillinger: Allbirds footwear lineup was 100% casual lifestyle shoes in 2019
“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.”
Zwillinger: Allbirds halted retail expansion and cut marketing spending
“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.”
Zwillinger: The Average American Buys Eight Pairs of Shoes Annually
“Yeah, I mean, I think, look, the average American consumer buys eight pairs of shoes a year. That's men, women, and child. And so that's about two and a half billion pairs of shoes sold every year.”
Only 17% Of US Shoe Purchases Occurred Online In 2017
“If in the shoot market in the U S as I said, eight billion dollars, only 17% of that is purchased online.”
Allbirds made 30 product modifications during its first 16 months
“We made probably 30 changes in the 16 months to that first release product.”
Allbirds co-founder Tim Brown captained the New Zealand World Cup team
“Tim Brown's my co-founder. He was a professional athlete, but he happened to have a design background. He's from New Zealand. He became the captain of the New Zealand national soccer team all the way through the 2010 world cup.”