Nike

“And with each project, the timeline for it to spread got shorter. So, so, so the Nike email diffused over something like three and a half months, and then rejection line was like two months for, you know, and then like it was like two, three weeks you know, so…”

“While Nike was a shoe company, so I know they didn't really understand clothing either, because even in their running shorts, they had these open seams in between their legs, and I'd run five K and I'd totally rash.”

“Stefan, he and his team were constantly making new materials to present to the likes of the Nikes and Underembers and Lulus, so they had created a material kind of at a similar time that they ended up showing me and maybe they had shown it to the other compani…”

“We're not up against the Nikes or Under Armors of the world. As a company, we're up against people's negative perceptions of themselves.”

“Well, Nike was a shoe company, so I know they didn't really understand clothing either, because even in their running shorts, they had these open seams in between their legs, and I'd run five K and I'd totally rash.”

“Every job opportunity I had for the next several years was companies from all walks of life coming to me being like, hey, can you do for us what you did for Nike? And I mean it, and that defined my career until about 2014, 1015. It was the only, every job I ha…”

“Which I've never really disclosed this before, but This seems like a great place to say, Guy, I think our budget was around 80,000 dollars to make this commercial.”

“I mean, I was making, you know, I was making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. This was more money than I made even post HBO. It was a legitimate business.”

“There's no Warby Parker, there's no Nike, there's no brands that people can align with and say, I like the look, I like the value, I like the price point that, like, it speaks to me as a customer. There was just nothing out there that did that.”

“I mean, this is a factory that produces for Nike and, you know, Saucony and Smartwool and some of the biggest sock brands in the world.”

“The one consistent Thing that we found in those companies that was different than our peer set of, you know, the aways and the Warby's of the world is that they didn't grow by raising hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and trying to skyrocket the highe…”

“I remember when Wes called me, and he told me what it was and the number was 70% less than what I had been making, and I remember just feeling like somebody had just, like, punched me.”

“The way that these contracts are set up. You get a bonus. If you win a medal, you get a reduction if you don't win a medal. So here was going to be Allison, you know, 10 months after giving birth and she would need to go to the world championships. She would n…”

“If you partner with those companies, you know, they have a similar type of storytelling and that's what allows you to become Mia Hamm, Serena Williams, Michael Jordan. It's the sponsors that do it, you know?”

“The Women's World Cup was coming up, and I remember, like, this very vividly. I was sitting in Cameron's nursery, and I got a call from Wes, and he has, he's like, don't shoot the messenger, but Nike wants to know if they can use your image in this campaign. I…”

“We pitched it to Nike, Puma, Adidas New Balance.”

“I think it's so deeply ingrained nowadays in the company that we only approach things that are impossible. If people are coming back, you know, after initial idea or vision, and people come back and say, oh, yeah, we can do it. I said, then we don't do it. Lea…”

“I was an athlete, right, running for their company, becoming world champion, they didn't even want to look at the technology, not even at the drawing.”

“And frankly, you know, if you look at the Under Armour story, to try to compete directly with Nike is suicide.”

“So I think if you're going to take a stand like that, which I think was right for them, and right for their brand, and right for their values, it worked. If they had wobbled, it would have been a very different story.”

“It's the first, really the first shoe brand to challenge the dominance of Nike and Adidas, certainly with running.”

“The way in which they were wrong at assessing the story I was telling versus the strategy that Nike was pursuing was that Nike made, in my opinion, a fatal mistake with their product. They made a product that all of their best athletes would never use. It was …”

“Starbucks and Nucky combined, I think we have more than both of those combined, yeah.”