The Ledger
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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…”
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 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.”
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.”
Zumiez likely sells more skateboard products than any retailer globally
“We probably sell more skateboard products than anybody in the world now.”
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.”
Guy Raz: Zumiez's success is driven by obsessive inventory management
“And the secret to the success of that store is inventory management. They're just obsessive about inventory management.”
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…”
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.”
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?”
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.”
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.”