Brian Smith
On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
2shows
2appearances
44statements
8resolved
5supported
1contradicted
63%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Brian Smith said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Brian Smith: Lack of Prior Use Enabled US Trademark Registration for UGG
“And I did a search of the world, especially the US, to see if there'd been any prior use of the trade name Ugg, and they had not. So, That opened up the gate for me to do the registration of the trademark.”
Growing sales without working capital leaves a fast-growing business twice as broke
“The more sales you get, the bigger your problems get in, in supply. I never really understood that. I, my accounting thinking was, we just sold a million dollars worth of product, we're broke. What's the answer? Oh, we'll sell two million next year and think w…”
Smith: UGG's board outvoted him to approve Rush Limbaugh ad campaign
“You know, we'd spent years building up this image of casual comfort and fashion and everything, and so I really fought it, but I was outvoted at a board meeting.”
Publicizing Oprah's endorsement early would have bankrupted UGG due to insufficient capital
“If we had announced that Oprah was wearing our shoes or boots, it would have killed the company when I owned the company, because I didn't have the capital to build the product to take on that demand.”
Smith: NPS surveys provide virtually no useful signal or actionable intent
“And NPS specifically are very bad. Like you get no signal from it, from an intense standpoint to understand what to actually do with it.”
Brian Smith: Low margins were UGG's biggest 20-year struggle
“That was one of the worst facets of the entire UGG project for 20 years, was the lack of margins I had because the pressure of the retail price kept us way, way down, so it was very hard to make money.”
Smith: Contract gave away full UGG ownership until trademark dispute resolved
“No, you don't get your stock issued until you finish the trademark. And I just hung the phone up, and I drove from Huntington Beach straight back to San Diego, and I pulled out my contract, and I read it, and I reread it, and I just went, oh, shit. I don't own…”
Gifting store managers free boots was UGG's most successful early marketing plan
“That cost me a pair of boots for each new store I opened, but that changed the trajectory of Ugg forever, and it was probably the best marketing plan I ever executed on.”
UGG co-owner died of a heart attack right before restoring Smith's equity
“Between the time he called me to get my stock, and that was the very next Sunday, he had a heart attack in this race and never recovered. And so, now his widow, who'd never stepped forward, Foot inside the Ugg business, now owned 100% of Ugg.”
A $200,000 life insurance settlement enabled Brian Smith to buy back UGG
“We ended up getting 200,000 dollars as a settlement to walk away... And so I signed a promissory note with her, and this 200,000 dollars was enough to pay her note out, And then by, you know, I owned the company 100% again.”
Smith: Marketplace revenue is stickier than Leon's SaaS subscriptions
“Plus on our end, that's a much stickier revenue source and some of the SaaS model that we have.”
Smith: Half of Australians owned sheepskin boots while America had none
“Oh my god, you know, one in two Australians has some sort of sheepskin footwear, and there's none in America.”
Brian Smith pooled $500 to secure US distribution for sheepskin boots
“We pulled 500 bucks together and called the guy who ran the advertisement, and we talked him into being distributors for the U.S.”
UGG's initial pitch to California shoe stores received zero orders
“He came back with about a 150 business cards of all these retailers, and not a single order, and said, Brian, they tell us we're crazy trying to sell sheepskin in California.”
UGG sold only 28 pairs of boots during its first year
“The total sales for the first year was 28 pairs.”
Selling sheepskin boots to surf shops only worked on cold, stormy days
“I learned early on that trying to walk into a surf shop with sheepskin boots on a hot day was like pointless. So I learned to wait for a really shitty day when, you know, the storm would hit, you know, then I'd go on the road and sales were, you know, I would …”
UGG sales quadrupled after swapping fashion models for authentic young surfers
“So when I ran those ads, the sales, which had been around, you know, 30 to 50,000 per year, the immediate jump was like 200,000 dollars.”
Brian Smith Took No Money From UGG Until Year Five or Six
“I think that was the fifth or sixth year. That was the first money I'd ever taken out of the company.”
Brian Smith: Having Retail Buyers Try Boots On Closed UGG's First Orders
“By being out there with the customers, it was so much easier for me to, you know, get a rapport going and introduce the product by having them try the boots on. Now, that turned out to be the biggest factor in closing our first orders was having the buyer try …”
Smith: UGG received 2,000 to 3,000 weekly boot orders in 1988
“Black and charcoal were just kicking butt with all of their orders. And we were, you know, getting two or 3000 pairs of orders a week.”
Smith: UGG purchased its suing competitor UGHS and ran its factory
“We ended up doing a deal where we purchased the UGHS company, and we maintained that factory for a couple of years.”
UGG gifted free boots to 400 Hollywood stylists to secure celebrity placement
“I found a mailing list of stylists in Hollywood and sent a letter to them, and about 400 people responded, and so I sent them all a pair of Ugg boots, you know, no questions asked, and it was a couple of months before I started seeing them on Celebrities”
Smith: Stockbrokers flooded UGG's switchboard after Rush Limbaugh sponsorship announced
“Today we have a new sponsor, and it's Ugg Boots from California, and that second, our switchboard shut down, because every broker in the country, every stockbroker, was calling us saying, Are you guys public? Can we buy stock? Can we buy, you know, because the…”
The other half of the tape: Brian Smith's own voice is left out of every number here. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Statements about Brian Smith, by other people (1)
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Brian's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | 1 | 27 | 71% 5/7 | full record on How I Built This → | |
 TOP FOUNDERSLEDGER | 1 | 17 | 0% 0/1 | full record on Top Founders → |