The Exchanges

Q Did those four years feel like there were battles?

A Yeah. Well, I think it also, it goes to sort of the genesis of Title IX, the company, is, you know, me and my teammates are getting uniforms that are hand-me-down men's uniforms. I remember my, my buddy Regina Sullivan, she wore, I think, like a size six and a half women's shoe, but they don't make women's shoes, so she had to go to like The little kids department at Macy's and buy some little boys sneakers. So the sense of having to create the traditions around a team, what it means to get success, while at the same time fighting for the good practice times, marketing support in the community, those were battles being fought on two fronts for sure. And as I said, the genesis of Title IX, I mean, I remember my buddies and I were all like, ah, when we graduate from college, we're going to go get some experience, and then we're going to start the women's version of Nike. Of course, they all went and got really good jobs, you know, in investment banking.

AI assessment note: “those were battles being fought on two fronts for sure.”

Q I think around 2000, you started to design and manufacture your own stuff, and I think today about half of what you sell in the shops and the website is your own design stuff. Um, how, how involved were you in, in the designs?

A I mean, what I would say about us is mostly what we are, and I think you have to be if you're going to be owner operated, we are very opportunistic. So the very first thing we ended up manufacturing ourself was a sports bra, and it was because I found a sports bra that someone else was selling, and it was kind of a passion project for her. She was maybe a yoga teacher, And she couldn't find a sports bra she liked. So she made this one and ended up being a top selling sports bra for us for many, many years. But at a certain point, she decided she was more interested in fitness instruction, understandably, than in making sports bras. So she said, hey, I want to get out of this business. Would you like to buy the rights and designs for this? We called it the frog bra. And I said, sure. Um, and then she coached us up on, on how to get into the manufacturing business.

AI assessment note: “Would you like to buy the rights and designs for this? We called it”

Q When were you able to actually hire people and pay them a salary?

A Every time someone asks me that, I'm taken back to my own decisions around that and how hard it was. You know, first we just had people who would help us out and volunteer, and then I remember, and this is probably one of the conflicts and maybe something about being a female entrepreneur, I really wanted to go home to South Carolina for Christmas, and the phones were going to ring, and people were going to want to place orders and return product, and I wanted to be in South Carolina, and I couldn't be because of the phones, and this was before call forwarding and all the stuff that you could do now. So I had a teammate, and I said, hey, and she lived in California. I was like, would you be up for minding the store while I go home for Christmas? And she said, sure. And I said, you know, and if it works out, then maybe you can keep doing some work. And so that was really how I hired my first actual paid employee as Renee Thomas Jacobs. We are still good friends. She ended up being our first president. Um, but it felt like a big step, like there's, who can I afford to do this? Or should I just be working harder myself?

AI assessment note: “that was really how I hired my first actual paid employee as Renee Thomas Jacobs”

Q And what was that the result of? Was it, was it you were just getting sort of better at managing things and more experienced? Did you hire people? What, what happened?

A Well, you know, what I would say is, it's just like staying in the game, right? I mean, that's just the best way I can describe it. It's just, for me, I'm just like, I'm going to just stay in the game here. I'm going to kind of keep hitting little singles. And I think it's, it kind of goes to basically a business philosophy is just sort of fail faster to succeed sooner. And, you know, if you're going to make big mistakes, those take a long time. Little mistakes don't take a very long time. You can make a lot of little mistakes really fast. So I think it was just because we didn't have anybody really until we were over forty million dollars. We didn't have anybody who had retail experience, apparel experience, marketing experience. Man, we had, everybody was just true believers, product users, That are really interested in women's outdoor gear and athletic apparel. That's it.

AI assessment note: “we didn't have anybody really until we were over forty million dollars.”

Q Yeah, I mean, you built a business that Didn't, it was bootstrapped, is bootstrapped. You never brought in outside investors, so you didn't have to make decisions that, that, you know, they wanted you to make. But there's a trade off, right? You don't, you don't explode, you don't go on the New York Stock Exchange, you don't, you're not a billionaire.

A Yeah, I mean, and I think it's, you know, when I think about that guy, I think about how this choice that we made, and that we remake every day, is informed by our business practices, and it's everything from the suppliers we choose to who we choose to hire. I mean, probably at, in the most important way is that we have chosen to mentor up-and-coming female executives rather than some Plug and play sea level. You know, actually, I have to say one of the things I'm still very proud of is that we grew the business from probably zero to about fifty million dollars. With not one person that knew anything about retail or apparel or business at all. I mean, it's just like pure passion about women, um, and the transformative power of sports. And, you know, we have this pitch fest that we do twice a year for up and coming women run brands. I mean, I am filled up by seeing these women come in and grow their businesses. We share resources and, and, Sometimes even finances with these kinds of businesses, and, and, and we're all stronger and better for it, so it's just a different game.

AI assessment note: “we're all stronger and better for it, so it's just a different game.”

Q Figuring out how we're going to get one, and, um, when did you start to see signs that sales were starting to pick up again?

A Well, I've been pushing for us to move from print to digital, um, for like six years. But COVID pushed us probably as far as we'd been in six years in six months. Um, everything moved digitally. Stuff that had been paper based was now online. So I really started first seeing the team just step up to the challenge of converting us to a fully, our accounting team went entirely paperless, um, which again, we've been pushing for, um, Our design team, uh, presented all their decks online, and then sales start to come back maybe in August or September. Of course, we didn't recover the year. We ended up in negative territory, but I would say we made up a lot of ground on it, so much so that by, I would say, July, we felt confident everybody had taken, uh, 25% or more pay cut.

AI assessment note: “and then sales start to come back maybe in August or September.”