Feb 6, 2023 · 56m · how-i-built-this
Zumiez: Tom Campion
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Tom Campion, co-founder and Chairman of Zumiez, tracing how disciplined inventory management, bold merchandising of skate and surf subcultures, and an energetic store culture built a global, billion-dollar retail empire.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 38.3% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 4.9 Guest teaching 4.4 Guest disagreement 2.2 Guy pushing back 2.1
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 54:12 Forceful rejection of the luck premise
When Guy suggests Zumiez might have caught a lucky wave, Tom immediately and emphatically dismisses the premise, asserting that luck had nothing to do with their success compared to disciplined hard work.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 47:52 Guy confronts Tom on environmental hypocrisyGuy presses Tom hard on the direct tension between his environmental philanthropy in Alaska and running a global, oil-dependent retail business that ships clothing across oceans.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 50:48 Multi-brand economics versus Patagonia's modelTom educates Guy on why Patagonia's repair-and-keep model works for a single vertical brand, but would be economically unsustainable for a multi-brand retailer dependent on open market consumer behavior.
Guy holds their own ▶ 50:34 Guy cites Yvon Chouinard interview as counter-modelGuy brings his direct interview with Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard into the discussion to challenge conventional retail consumerism.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Early Retail Roots: From Grocery Aisles to JCPenney | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guy prompts Tom on his early retail experience at JCPenney and how inventory was managed without computers in the 1970s. Tom explains the operational mechanics of department store retail and white sales. | |
| Partnering with Gary Hawkinson and Securing the SBA Loan | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Guy questions Tom on leaving a stable career for a risky venture and asks about financing the launch with an SBA loan. Guy demonstrates knowledge of late 1970s interest rates to match Tom's financial memories. | |
| Opening Above the Belt and Navigating Retail Peaks | 5 | 5 | 2 | 3 | Tom introduces the concept of violent peaks in teen retail and explains why retailers fail when they fall in love with inventory. Guy stops the flow to challenge Tom on whether violent peaks is his own coining. | |
| Expanding Stores and Discovering Surfwear Brands | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Guy asks about store expansion and the shift toward Southern California action sports brands. Tom explains spotting trends like Gotcha and Quicksilver and testing them in the Pacific Northwest. | |
| Mid-Episode Interlude: The Transition to Zumiez | 4 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Tom humorously shuts down the romantic idea that he was a skater or surfer, plainly stating he was simply a businessman selling what moves. Guy readily validates Tom's pragmatic commercial focus. | |
| Snowboarding Expansion, Gary's Departure, and Rick Brooks | 5 | 4 | 2 | 2 | Tom explains leveraging supplier relationships to get early snowboard inventory and describes buying out Gary before bringing in Rick Brooks. Guy digs into the valuation and emotional weight of deciding not to sell. | |
| The Trademark Dispute and Rebranding as Zumiez | 4 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks about the trademark dispute that forced Above the Belt to rebrand. Tom explains the origin of the name Zumiez from a Smithsonian magazine article about Zuni tribes and a designer's spelling error. | |
| The Orange Couch and Cultivating In-Store Hangouts | 4 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Guy asks about the intentional store layout and culture building around teenage retail workers. Tom explains how the orange couch created community dwell time and details his 100K incentive trip program. | |
| Skate Culture Goes Mainstream and Facing Brand Skeptics | 6 | 5 | 3 | 3 | Guy brings up the pushback from skate purists who labeled Zumiez a mall store for posers. Tom vigorously counters that Zumiez trained staff to be authentic and supported core brands better than local skate shops. | |
| Going Public, Physical Stores vs. E-Commerce, and Pandemic Resilience | 6 | 5 | 3 | 3 | Guy notes how e-commerce and dying department stores impacted mall retail. Tom qualifies Guy's premise, explaining that physical touchpoints and community interactions kept Zumiez resilient through closures. | |
| Private Label Strategy and Embracing Organized Chaos | 5 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Guy asks about Zumiez avoiding front-facing private labels unlike competitors that struggled like Gap or Aeropostale. Tom articulates the strategy of organized chaos and maintaining brand diversity. | |
| Balancing Fast-Fashion Retail with Environmental Philanthropy | 7 | 6 | 3 | 6 | Guy directly challenges Tom on the apparent contradiction between his environmental activism and running a carbon-heavy fast-fashion retail empire. Tom concedes being a hypocrite while explaining the structural economic realities of multi-brand retail versus vertical brands like Patagonia. | |
| Chairman Role, Workforce Diversity, and The Role of Hard Work | 5 | 6 | 6 | 2 | Guy asks his standard concluding question balancing luck versus hard work. Tom forcefully and immediately rejects the luck framing, insisting Zumiez's success came purely from discipline and grinding. |
Statements from this episode (17)
JCPenney's white sales acted as a barometer for the broader economy
“And you could measure how the economy was doing during a white sale when customers, usually women, come in and they stock up.”
Zumiez launched with $10K in equity and a $35K SBA loan
“And now I employ 10, 11,000 people, Gen Z, because of an SBA loan. We each put in five grand, and we borrowed 35 grand. Something like that.”
Zumiez paid 16% to 18% interest rates in its early years
“For the first four or five years as we grew, I think we were paying 16, 17, 18% interest rates.”
Teen apparel retail relies entirely on back-to-school and Christmas demand peaks
“Interesting thing about teenage clothing business, you have two violent peaks. Got back to school. Which, you know, it's longer, used to be longer, then you have the Christmas season. So, I was very aware of that from my years at Pennies, as was Gary, so you'd…”
Testing Gotcha and Quiksilver sparked Zumiez's pivot to action sports
“The first line I brought in to test this, Was a line called Gotcha Surfwear. And a big fish man with his flag on, you know, on it, and it just like, it was, for me, a holy shit moment, man. This is evolution, and I'm doing all the buying then, and so it was im…”
Skateboard culture held more appeal for youth than traditional team sports
“The skateboard kid was just friggin cooler than the five guys that can be on a basketball team, or 10 guys on a football team.”
Zumiez was one of the first Burton retailers in US malls
“I always thought, or I know I was close, be the first Burton retailer to bring product into malls in the United States, and this would have been in the United States.”
Snowboard retailers made their real profits on apparel, not hard goods
“You sold, you didn't make money on the, you made little money on the boards and the bindings and the boots, and so fall, you'd sell, you Pair of pants, pair of jeans, but then they go, oh, you got a new category called snowboard pants.”
Campion bought out his co-founder to take 95% ownership of Zumiez
“We were able to work out a contract where I bought him out, and then I became, he kept a little bit of it, I think, but I became, like, 95% of the ownership”
The name 'Zumiez' originated from a designer's spelling mistake
“And we had a design guy that were working with us then named Doug, and Doug screwed up the spelling, Z-U-M-I-E-Z. And I look at it, and I go, that's it?”
Over 2,000 Zumiez retail employees sold over $100,000 in merchandise last year
“And this last year I had over 2000 kids that sold over a hundred grand.”
Zumiez's top individual retail store employee sold over $1,000,000 in one year
“My number one employee sold over a million, a 1,000,001 employee.”
Zumiez retail staff were just as authentic as independent skate shop workers
“There was pushback. Usually it was from a competitive core skate shop. And I'm going to say it again. We weren't cheaper. The brands we got and the hard goods we got, we taught and trained our kid who was just as core as a kid that worked in the local skater s…”
Zumiez likely sells more skateboard products than any retailer globally
“We probably sell more skateboard products than anybody in the world now.”
Zumiez has never put its brand name on private-label merchandise
“Yeah, it doesn't, we don't use the word Zoomies. We've never put Zoomies on it.”
Non-vertical retailers sacrifice margin to gain assortment agility and reduce risk
“You lose points on the margin, not being vertical, but you gain on the assortment plan, where it's more diverse, and if this shit stops selling, you mark it down, you get rid of it, and you don't go forward.”
Retailers cannot sustainably charge consumers a price premium for carbon neutrality
“I could say, I'm gonna be carbon neutral, and you're gonna pay an extra 10 bucks for every unit of clothing in our stores, and because how consumerism works, and how markets works, and economies work, it would be a very, ah, noble thing to do, but you wouldn't…”