Disclosure
Life is Good faced decimation when COVID wiped out wholesale orders
“Our business is structured in a way where half of our business was wholesale, and that means the high majority of those retailers closed their doors, canceled their orders, and our business was pretty close to being decimated, so we were having discussions can…”
Insight
Jacobs: 12-to-18-month wholesale retail supply chains are an archaic model
“The tail was wagging the dog where the wholesale business and this long supply chain window was kind of ruling our company, and we already knew that that was an archaic model. All of America retail operates on it by and large. We knew that consumers want thing…”
Insight
Jacobs: Perfect inventory matters more than lower per-unit printing costs
“So it essentially is more expensive to print per unit, but if we're doing it right, you end up with perfect inventory and inventory is the thing that kills businesses.”
Insight
Bert Jacobs: Modern brands cannot be built without consumer co-authorship
“It's the 21st century, and anybody who thinks that they're a smart entrepreneur or a smart marketer, and they're gonna build their brand on their own, you're kidding yourself. You have to enable your consumers to co-author the story of your brand”
Disclosure
Founders Bert and John Jacobs retain 100% ownership of Life is Good
“We own a hundred percent of the business, and, you know, we have no intention of going public or selling the business.”
Disclosure
Jacobs: Life is Good spent millions on direct-to-garment tech pre-COVID
“We've been researching for the better part of five years, and we just, before COVID hit, spent several million dollars on technology”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Jacobs: Life is Good e-commerce revenue doubled year-over-year in 2020
“Our e-commerce business has doubled to date over last year in such a difficult macroeconomic environment, and the wholesale business, you know, went down to next to nothing, but it's starting to rise again.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Life is Good saw its greatest growth following 9/11 and 2008
“The inflection points where our business has thrived the most, we've steadily grown and had a healthy business, but I'll go through them really quickly. 2001, nine 11. Believe it or not, in the wake of that awful disaster, our business grew. It grew tremendous…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Founders Bert and John Jacobs had $78 left after printing first batch
“Not even, actually. 78 bucks, yeah, the day that we, after printing the 48 Life is Good t-shirts, we had 78 bucks left.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Life is Good generated about $262,000 in revenue in 1995
“Yeah, and we did 262, I think it was, 262,000.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Life is Good rented a shipping container for $30 monthly as warehouse
“They had a dirt parking lot, and for zero rent, they let, because we were afraid to get the overhead of a warehouse, and so they let us it was 30 dollars a month to rent the lease the container, and for zero dollars, they let us park it on their lot.”
Insight
Bert Jacobs: Marks on t-shirts are ornamental unless proven as brand source
“And by definition, legally a trademark denotes the source of the goods. So there's, when you just put a mark on a t-shirt, that's called ornamental. But if people look at it and say that represents the source of the goods in some way, then it's a brand.”
Assertion Supported
Retail partnership with Galyan's pushed Life is Good past $1.2M revenue
“Galleons was probably responsible for hundreds of new accounts over the next year or two, and business really started booming, you know, it went from that 250,000 to 620 Then we broke a million at 1.2.”
Disclosure
Life is Good's first employee Kerry Sherman still owns 5% of company
“Until Carrie, who still works with us to this day, by the way, she actually owns five percent of the business.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Life is Good generates approximately $100 million in annual revenue
“Yeah, that's about right.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Founders generated under $80,000 annually before launching Life is Good
“It was probably, you know, under 80,000 dollars in top line revenue.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Life is Good's first employee agreed to a $17,000 starting salary
“Our question to her was, what is the lowest amount that you could possibly get paid to work with us, and she said 17,000 dollars.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Life is Good failed five trademark applications before hiring an attorney
“Well, we failed five times. We were going to the Boston Public Library at night because we couldn't afford an attorney, and we sent five applications and failed”
