Brooks Running, every mention
47 scenes · ← back to Brooks Running
tap a year for its mentions
every year anyone Ben Gilbert 30Jim Weber 14David Rosenthal 3
Verbatim, from the transcripts: the passages where Brooks Running comes up
Holiday Special 2022 · Acquired
- ▶ 49:09 Ben Gilbert We did a Brooks run with people in the morning.
Howard Marks & Andrew Marks: Something of Value · Acquired
- ▶ 45:32 Ben Gilbert All of these are now tiny businesses run by their own independent managers, just like Brooks Running, for example, within Berkshire, and producing incredible cash flow for Tiny and their managers.
The Playbook: Lessons from 200+ Company Stories · Acquired
- ▶ 50:49 Ben Gilbert So, ah, this photo is, ah, ah, ripped with love from Brooks Running's website.
- ▶ 51:04 Ben Gilbert So for folks who don't know, uh, Brooks is a pretty special company.
- ▶ 52:34 Ben Gilbert Brooks, Brooks, Brooks, Brooks, and of course some Asics and some, um, some newer brands too, and of course the, the, the new crazy Nike shoes.
Arena Show Part II: Brooks Running (with CEO Jim Weber) · Acquired
- ▶ 1:28 Ben Gilbert We're going to go right here into the onstage introduction of Jim and the Brooks story.
- ▶ 1:40 Ben Gilbert Sort of thinking, Brooks is this, like, shoe brand, and what can tech people possibly learn from a hundred-year-old shoe company?
- ▶ 4:42 Ben Gilbert On to our conversation with Jim Weber, the CEO of Brooks Running.
- ▶ 5:00 Ben Gilbert Brooks Running.
- ▶ 5:18 Ben Gilbert So when the CEO, Jim Weber, took the helm in 2002, the company was losing five million dollars a year, it was thirty million dollars in debt, it was a week away from missing payroll, and the board was like having weekly meetings to figure…
- ▶ 5:36 Ben Gilbert It was a business of pretty modest size.
- ▶ 5:38 Ben Gilbert It was a sixty million dollar revenue business, and when we talk about this revenue number, you know, it's not SAS numbers.
- ▶ 5:52 Ben Gilbert So, that business had been around for, like, 90 years, and it sold all sorts of products at every price point.
- ▶ 6:08 Ben Gilbert Jim came in and bet the company exclusively on serving active runners as a segment, and he cut all other business lines.
- ▶ 6:16 Ben Gilbert Over the last 20 years he's grown the business to over a billion dollars in revenue.
- ▶ 6:28 Ben Gilbert So, along the way, Brooks was acquired by Berkshire Hathaway, and Warren Buffett personally elevated Brooks and Jim to make the company a direct report to him.
- ▶ 6:37 Ben Gilbert Jim is a leader, a visionary, and a fighter, not only growing the business over the last 20 years, but personally fighting and beating cancer.
- ▶ 7:17 Jim Weber Best gym bag at the company, for sure.
- ▶ 7:52 Jim Weber So the book is Running With Purpose, and Brooks has been a fabulous journey, and I'm, I'm a person that believes in life, ah, the journey is to be, you know, just cherished and, and enjoyed, because the finish lines are fleeting, and we…
- ▶ 9:20 Ben Gilbert Let's go all the way back to when you first encountered Brooks in 1998.
- ▶ 9:26 Ben Gilbert Talk to us about how you came to the company and where the company was at at that point.
- ▶ 15:24 Jim Weber And in Brooks' darkest hour, they wrote a check and recapitalized it.
- ▶ 15:32 Jim Weber And so they were fantastic partners for Brooks.
- ▶ 16:05 Ben Gilbert I think that's the last time Brooks has taken outside capital.
- ▶ 17:20 Jim Weber You know, I, here, here was the insight that we saw, and, um, man, I, you know, monopolies are great, network effects are great, platform, you know, all those things are great, and what I saw in Brooks, there was a book that was meaningful…
- ▶ 18:33 David Rosenthal And a loyal Brooks customer stays with you for.
- ▶ 19:23 Jim Weber Um, number one shoe in the half, Brooks.
- ▶ 25:09 Ben Gilbert It was really clarifying reading your book and understanding that Brooks' brand is about performance, but it is not serious.
- ▶ 25:18 Ben Gilbert And I think that was an interesting clarification for me because I run and I take my performance seriously and I've selected a very specific motion control Brooks shoe to do that.
- ▶ 25:52 Jim Weber You know, I think, I think it really what it relates to, and this is, I think, what Brooks got before any other brand, is you, we have, we are sweating product.
- ▶ 27:08 Jim Weber So approachability, I think, was super key, and, and Brooks is a very inclusive brand.
- ▶ 33:41 Jim Weber Brooks, everything's complicated, everything's competitive, but it's like moving a wall of bricks forward, and you gotta get, you know, as a, I think as a CEO, you gotta move it all forward, so when some things are falling behind, you…
- ▶ 38:12 Jim Weber So I'd gone to school on him, so once we got part of Fruit, I thought, okay, this is good because Charlie and Warren are going to understand what we're doing at Brooks.
- ▶ 38:25 Jim Weber But Fruit of the Loom, ah, and, and Brooks, we're just completely different companies.
- ▶ 39:00 Jim Weber They, they actually, on, on paper, they were going to move us to Bowling Green, and it would have killed Brooks.
- ▶ 39:29 Jim Weber Um, they, we took them, you know, sort of right to the edge of saying, you've got to commit to Brooks.
- ▶ 1:01:38 Ben Gilbert So, can you paint for me what the A-plus case looks like for Brooke five years from now?
- ▶ 1:02:04 Jim Weber So the first one, the A case, we just created a, you know, a North Star 10 year vision for Brooks.
- ▶ 1:08:42 Ben Gilbert Brooke's running with the run the morning before the show.
Arena Show Part I: Idea Dinner + YC Continuity · Acquired
- ▶ 3:10 Ben Gilbert Tonight we have Jim Weber, the CEO of Brooks Running, another Seattle monster business that we're very excited to talk to you about.
- ▶ 1:30:27 Ben Gilbert The part two of the arena show with Jim Weber, the CEO of Brooks.
- ▶ 1:33:06 Ben Gilbert We're super excited to share the, the Jim story with you and the story of Brooks, and, uh, we'll, we'll be doing that in a few days here, and listeners, we'll see you next time.
Platforms and Power (with Hamilton Helmer and Chenyi Shi) · Acquired
- ▶ 0:25 Ben Gilbert Jim Weber, the CEO of Brooks Running.
- ▶ 0:49 David Rosenthal People who don't know, Brooks Running is a very successful now standalone division of Berkshire Hathaway.
- ▶ 1:00 David Rosenthal What they went from under Jim, they went from like de minimis small number of millions of revenue to over a billion in revenue a year competing with Nike and Adidas.
- ▶ 1:09 Ben Gilbert They were like accidentally
- ▶ 1:11 Ben Gilbert Bought by Berkshire as part of a fruit of the loom roll-up, and they were sort of this bland nothing brand, and by unbelievable maniacal focus on making fantastic running products, that is how they became the billion dollar business that…