Insight
Erickson: Challenger marketplaces must offer differentiated products, not just better values
“You can't be an Etsy with better values. You got to be Etsy with a different product.”
Insight
Erickson: Taking outside capital causes founders to lose control of destiny
“You know, I never thought of either looking for outside money or wanting outside money, and maybe that was a good thing of my naivete, because once you do that, you know, you lose control of your destiny.”
Disclosure
Erickson backed out of selling Clif Bar minutes before signing
“So halfway around the block, I decided not to sell the company, and then I felt completely free.”
Insight
Erickson: Launching directly into mass retail usually fails without niche base
“You have to have that foundation first, and then from there you go out. If you're going to try to go mass market, you have to have so much funding to be able to do that, and chances are it's not going to work, because you've got to build that base.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
PowerBar sued Clif Bar over ads, inadvertently creating industry buzz
“Our insurance picked up the tab, and we ended up settling with Power Bar, but it created this buzz in the bicycle industry where people said, hey, have you heard of Cliff Bar?”
Assertion Supported
Quaker Oats offered $120M for Clif Bar on $40M in sales
“We got a deal, we got an offer for a hundred and twenty million dollars on forty million dollars in sales.”
Assertion Supported
Erickson took on $60M in debt to buy out his co-owner
“Secondly, my partner wanted out, so I had to negotiate a deal, and so that was seven months of negotiation, and third was I had to go out as, Our attorney says, dialing for dollars. I had to go find sixty million dollars.”
Insight
Erickson: A purpose-driven business is more powerful than wealthy philanthropists
“The power of a business done the right way
Is way more powerful than two rich people.”
Assertion Contradicted
Erickson: Clif Bar grew revenue every single year for 30 years
“We just, we never did not grow for 30 years.”
Assertion Supported
Erickson: PowerBar sued Clif Bar five days after a comparative print ad
“So we did some print ads and we did a print ad called It's Your Body, You Decide. And it was going directly after Power Bar. And in five days, we had a lawsuit against Power Bar.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Erickson: Clif Bar added 700 retail accounts months after PowerBar lawsuit
“And we had 700 accounts in like months. And our goal Sounds very aggressive, but we're, our goal is to put them out of business, and for the first 10 to 15 years, our people were like, we are going to just go after their market share everywhere we could”
Disclosure
Erickson: A 25-person field sampling team drove Clif Bar's early growth
“We had a team of 25 people around the country, and then they had local people that they would hire for the weekend events, and I really think that's what put us on the map, but our product was, ah, inexpensive enough where we could actually give out whole bars…”
Assertion Supported
Erickson: Clif Bar never took outside investment in 30 years
“Kit and I never took,
A dime from anybody over our 30 years of running Clif Bar,
, we never brought on an equity partner.”
Insight
Gary Erickson: Waiting Three Days to Make Crisis Decisions is Fatal
“And then as soon as you can take some action and don't sit on things because we don't have time to sit on things. We've been making decisions where we have to act now or tomorrow. And if we wait three days, sorry, we're screwed. So Adapt and take some action.”
Disclosure
Gary Erickson: The Pandemic Fully Tested Clif Bar's Five-Bottom-Line Business Model
“This is the first time that our business model is put to kind of a full test. Like, it's easy when you're like, not easy, but, so we have this five bottom lines business model, you know, sustaining our business, our brands, our people, our community, and our p…”
Opinion
Erickson: PowerBars functioned as fuel but never tasted good
“They just, they're hard. They were, they never really did taste good, but we always, as bike racers, we always thought of them as the bitter pill, that they do the job, but it's not about taste.”
Assertion Supported
Clif Bar reached $700,000 in sales by the end of 1992
“By the end of 1992, we sold 700,000 dollars of Clif Bars.”
Assertion Contradicted
Clif Bar nearly doubled sales annually for eight consecutive years
“We almost doubled sales for the next eight years in a row.”
Assertion Supported
An early handshake deal led to an ownership lawsuit against Clif Bar
“So I did a handshake deal with a distributor in, you know, early nineties where it ended up biting me because they weren't performing. And so I canceled their quote contract and they came back and sued me for ownership.”
Assertion Supported
Clif Bar was the last major independent after PowerBar sold
“Power Bar was already, already sold, and Balance Bar was sold, so it was just, it was kind of just us as the third.”
Assertion Supported
It took Clif Bar nine years to pay off its $60M debt
“And it took us nine years to pay off that thing.”
Disclosure
Gary Erickson: Clif Bar Donated 6.6 Million Bars During Early Pandemic
“So far, we've given out in the first part of March, 3.6 million bars to food banks and healthcare workers and frontline. And then we're on another, we're on the second round. We're now committed another three million.”
Assertion Supported
Erickson: PowerBar was the dominant cyclist energy bar in 1990
“The only energy bar really that was on the market at that time that so many cyclists were eating... It was Power Bar. And they were also from Berkeley, coincidentally.”
Assertion Supported
Doug Gilmore designed Clif Bar's iconic rock climber packaging
“A real good friend that I was working with named Doug Gilmore, you know, we, I helped him out with some of the advertising for the bicycle company, and I knew that he was very, very creative person. I said, you need to design the package for me, and he came up…”
