Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the bob lef Sets podcast. My guest today is Terrence Riley, the marketer extraordinary, the man behind the Stanley Quencher, the revival of Crocs and now Hey Dude shoots.
Terrence, how do you reach the public today?
I'll throw so many ways. The best way to reach them is fast. That's really the trick. And through social media, the opportunities to reach people fast are so incredible and extraordinary, so social and fast. That's been some of the unlocks in the last ten years for certainly my career.
You say fast, what do you mean there?
Fast today tomorrow? You know, the attention span of most folks is now, and so to get folks attention, you got to react quickly to what's happening on trends. A lot of the things that you write about, it's on TikTok, it's on social media, and brands in particular can see that. And the quicker you respond, react or create something, the better off your connection to that consumer or culture is what a gift it is too.
Okay, let's go with your present gig. Hey dude, you know, Hey Dude's numbers were great. Crocs purchased it recently, they haven't been that good. You're obviously given the job to bring it back. How are you going to do that?
Yeah, so, hey dude, boy, we're a eight hundred plus million dollar footwear brand. You know, we're a top ten global footwear brand. So it's an amazing success story. But you're right, there's been a bit of a lull, which is one of the reasons why I accepted the offer to come as the Hay Dude president. And let's connect with consumers, customers and culture and so a couple things
that I laid out really on my first day. You know, you join the team and you listen to some of the things that are working or isn't, and then you lay out a vision for the brand, and it's to really build the core and add more is where it starts. Like we had the Wendy and the Wally, these two famous silhouettes, which most people know is hey dude. So we've got to strengthen those things and you know forever,
you know, since the Beatles at least are Elvis. You know, youth culture drives culture, but more than ever, youth female
culture drives culture. And so to ignite a young female consumer is really an important aspect of what we're up to here at Hey dude in the nine months since I've been president, and do it through a few lenses, you know, where people are wearing shoes, travel and music and pre and post sport, especially young women who are wearing footwear in that kind of environment, to do all those things to ignore this brand, and we're already up to it. And it's been an incredible nine months for
me in the way we're already connecting. So it's been a lot of fun.
Okay, prior to getting an email from you, I didn't know what hay Dude was. I didn't know they were shoes. Am I an anomaly? Is there an issue of knowledge? Or is there an issue of I'm not the target audience and therefore that's not where you're focusing.
Yes, I think it's a little bit of all of that. I think we're a relatively new brand and so that's part of it. But you know, eight hundred plus million dollar mystery is a pretty exciting opportunity for somebody like myself to you know, get the keys thrown at me to drive this car. So it's a pretty extraordinary thing, you know, but we're a footwear brand for all ages. There's you know, dad's in Iowa that love us, and young women in Miami who love us, and everywhere in between.
And so the more we can get younger and more female, as I said earlier, the more well known Hey Dude will be. But you know, we're in some of America's premier retailers and we are a real success story that hit a bump in the road and now we're driving it like we stole it bub.
Okay, not everybody is familiar with Hey Dude. Can you tell us what the Hay Dude shoe is?
Yeah? So it's a really comfortable, casual shoe. It's like six ounces. It's the lightest thing. When you put your feet in, then you're like, oh dude, Like these are the lightest, most comfortable shoes out there, and they're meant for anything. Really, they're not performance shoes, of course, they're really casual and they're led by the Wendy and Wally silhouette that is really our icon. But Hey Dude is
it's unlike anything, Bob. It's a real success story that I said is a huge top ten footwear brand that still is a bit of an unknown and that's an incredible thing.
Okay, let's start really at the basics. Sure, what is the dude shoe made on?
I was made out of different things? Certainly canvas is the thing that makes us famous, and it was so light and is a credible thing to pack in a suitcase, to add that extra pair in your bag so you don't hit the dreaded you know, weight limit in your your travel bag. So stylish, comfortable, and a variety of things that we make different styles, And there's boots, there's our classic Wendy's in our wallis, there's slippers that are
made out of fuzz and all those good things. So a variety of different styles to suit alls of different needs.
Okay, So the quantity of product. In the late nineties, when Steve Jobs came back to Apple, he quite famously streamlined the product line to make it more comprehensible. How many different off rings does hey dudes have? And how do you decide whether to add something not add something?
Yeah, great question. I think, as I mentioned earlier, it's to build the core and add more. And so the core is the Wendy and the Wally, the classic silhouette that people who do know, Hey dude, know it for and so we need to strengthen that icon, but build around it things like the slipper that I mentioned. A success that is beginning to percolate for us is an Austin Lift, which is a women's style that's a slip in elevated platform shoot different than the Wendy in the Wallly.
So you want to strengthen the core, which is hey dude, but you want to add the more and connect with different consumers. So a similar strategy and underperforming skews we stop making.
Okay distribution, people think content is king. If you can't buy it, it doesn't matter what it is. So you know, Nike famously pulled back and their sales went down. They wanted to go to a more direct sales model in this particular case, how many retailers can Hey dude, and do you want more? Do you want less? What is your relationship with the retail cham great question.
Yeah, we're in some of America's and the world's leading footwear destinations, you know, Dick's Sporting Goods here in the States, or famous Footwear Academy, and so we want to be on shelf. You know, footwear is often a TecTile thing. You want to pick it up and you want to try it on. But also, heydo dot Com, Amazon, or places where folks are shopping, And we were the number three TikTok shop brand in December of twenty twenty four, and so we want to be where the consumer is shopping,
and that's what we're up to. So we're one of the top five footwear brands and so many of the key footwear destinations in the US and get an after it.
Okay, let's drill down on some of the things you said physical retail. Yeah, how hard is it to get in a store? How many models will they take? How do you make sure that they're promoting your shoe appropriately?
Yeah, Well, you're only as good as what the consumer is reacting to, right, So the partners at any footwear destination or any retailer are reacting to what their consumers
are after. So certainly, as I mentioned earlier that Wendy and the Wally silhouette is eighty percent of Hey Dude, So introducing new styles and new colors, materials and finish for those to have somebody buy that extra pair or the one or two that they buy every season is part of the dance that you do with retailers, and so they tell you what's working and they buy or don't buy, depending on the success or the EBB and flow of what you're doing is the brand to market
those different styles and so a variety of products in a variety of different settings around the world.
And how do you determine pricing?
Well, certainly the consumer helps us do that, but we're really an affordable you know, under seventy five dollars, largely a pair of comfortable shoes that you know, just last you for a long time and serve a variety of needs in so many different places. As I mentioned earlier, travel or pre and post sport, after the beach or
at the barbecue. We're just walking around. I mean, hey, dudes are so popular as I mentioned earlier, by our success and now we're just hooking the brand up to the rejuvenation machine.
Okay, what percentage of sales or physical retail as opposed to online.
Yeah, that's something we keep to ourselves, Bob, It's something that we don't typically share those kinds of things. But our online business is growing, as I mentioned earlier, TikTok shop and other things are new ways that we are showcasing hey Dude to consumers.
Okay, so let's just assume I wanted to buy online. Yeah, I can buy direct from heydude dot com or something I can buy TikTok, I can buy Amazon. Can I buy the issues?
All the above? You can all the above haydud dot com, TikTok shop, or Amazon, or you walk into some of your favorite retailers wherever you are and they'll likely have Heydude depending on where you are and what store you walk into.
Okay, what is the deal? Tell us more about the TikTok shop and how that works. Yeah, so lots of different content creators are talking about your brand on TikTok shop and they get a certain percentage of the business. It comes and goes depending on the content creator and the size of their audience. And it's a way to get your brand, your footwear right in front of folks on their for you page or wherever they're scrolling. And it's been a remarkable success for the brand.
I joined as the Haydude president in May, and I've seen my success in other places on TikTok and social media, and that's one of the things I suggested to the team strongly that we really get active on TikTok and in TikTok shop, and we got after it thanks to a great team, and we've seen really strong success.
Okay, let's say I'm a user. Yeah, theoretically, can I say I'm going to peruse the TikTok shop or pretty much am I buying because I see the video of it?
Influencer both you can go to the TikTok shop or it will come through your algorithm as the algorithm works, and so you'll be interrupted by TikTok shop for whatever brand in our case, hey dude, or you can go to the hey Dude TikTok shop as you are on TikTok. And if you're not on TikTok, you go to other places to discover hey dude, whether we're on Instagram or other places like Facebook or just generally searching through Amazon, Google or hated.
Okay, so let's start with TikTok to reach the customer. How do you do that? Is it mostly about deals with influencers, Is it about posting your own content? Is it about buying ads? How do you do it? Yeah?
All the above all the above, we have our own Hey Dude created content by our wonderful social media team. We work with content creators to create content. We work with celebrities or artists to create content, and of course TikTok shop content creators as well. So it is a real multi pronged delivery system just through TikTok alone that you want to keep fresh and get multiple messages out to the consumer. The messages that you want the consumer
to know are important to Heydo, therefore they should know it. Okay, leaving celebrities aside, what works? I mean there are different theories. Let's talk print, which is dying. Some people say if you give a lot of information, the active buyer will actually be interested in that revent. Other people want less content or is it more about flashy video what sparks people on TikTok to be activated to purchase or check out Hey Do. I think humor can work oftentimes, but
I think it's genuine content. Like genuine genuineness is what people are after and what connects the most. And as I said earlier, doing something and reacting to something fast can be that. And then of course, when brands participate in trends, you know, as you know, there's a different TikTok trend every week or so, and when the brand participates in it and does it well. Not all brands do it all the time, well including hey dude, but when you do it gets engagement gets shared, and that's
part of the trick as well. So it's really an asset allocation of different things, not just on TikTok, but generally.
Can you give me some specific example where there's a trend on TikTok and hey dude, leverage that.
Yeah, just uh, last week we did something that had four million views, which you know evades me of why, but it was two of our young social media associates just have their finger on that pulse and they engaged in it and away we went with, you know, four
million views of something like that. That would seem innocuous and it's not something that you can script or would put in your marketing calendar, but it is something that is in real time and it was done well, and the consumer and the TikTok viewer if you will, or user reacted to it. You know, brands are doing that right now, including hey, do the you know the du lingo logo that their sunsetting. You know, brands are participating
in that, including hey do just today. So there's different ways that you can engage.
Well, way be very specific how you were participating in that.
We just uh we posted about the the quote unquote death of the Duolingo logo, and so lots of brands are doing it and we've got nice little traction on it and different ways. Just to be part of the conversation is you know, I think others have said it's the marketplace, it's the town square. And so when you engage and you do it well, and not all brands get it right every time, but when you do do
it well, it connects. And the more you're throwing different lines into the water to appeal to different audiences and put your brand out there as a current, fast moving finger on the pulse of culture brand, the more you connect and the more people say, I might give those shoes a try.
Okay, when it comes to influencers, how many influencers might you have relationships within pay at a time?
Dozens and dozens, and they ebb and flow depending on the season, depending on the shoe, depending on the message that we want to tell. So there are dozens and dozens of them, and some are with us throughout seasons. But it's a very cyclical of the moment type of environment where brands like us are fast moving and folks come and go. They're always in our stable, so to speak. But it depends on the message, time of year, gender perhaps,
or the story that we're looking to tell. But we continue to want to build relationships with more influencers so that they're all part of a larger Hay Dude community.
And how do you establish that relationship through an intermediary? How do you find these influencers.
All the above, intermediaries, agencies, personal connections, prior experience, genuine fans of the brand, which is again back to authenticity. There's a lot of Hay Dude fans out there. There's a lot of fans who want to work with Haydude and get paid to share their love for Hey Dude. And so that's part of it for any brand. So it's a real mosaic of different content creators or influencers. Some work better than others, and some are of the moment and some are more evergreen.
Okay, so let's assume you have this relationship, you're going to pay the influencer. How much direction? How much in terms of requirements does hey dude have?
Yeah, it varies. Also, there's a brief, and you know, we want to give content creators the latitude to create. Otherwise it's just dictation and that shows. So the content creator doesn't want to be dictated to. But there'll be brand standards of course, and things that we would not want people to say. But we review it and if there's something that was just off the mark, we'll ask,
you know, the content creator to redo it. And that happens occasionally, but not too often because the briefs are usually tight and we have relationships with people that we trust and have vetted and have followers in various numbers, some huge uge and some micro and you know we ebb and flow with that as well.
Okay, you talked about humor. What might a brief be? Give me an example of a brief in something somebody actually created.
Oh yeah, there's so many things that are just different.
You know.
Humor is you know, a different taste for everybody, So not every what you think is funny, I don't think is funny, and vice versa. So none, no humorous bits come to mind directly, but it's all with a you know,
we're not too serious as a brand. So the things that we're doing, like we were just at the waste management open in Phoenix this weekend, and lots of content that we created on that funny, silly, unexpected content that was just unlike anything that maybe is humorous or maybe it's just different, but got lots of attention online, including articles written about like what was haydu doing at the
waste management open this weekend? So there's different ways to connect with all these guys wearing women wearing green suits, body suits that started making what is all that? And people commenting like what is all that noise in the back of the waste management open with haydude? Or what is that even? And so we got a chance to inject ourselves somewhere to introduce a upcoming golf Hey dude, shoe so with pins and aces, so cool stuff unexpected as a way to cut through and introduce a new style.
Okay, all these golfers have endorsement deals. If you look at Beats first, it was let's just get the headphones on people's heads. Do you go to the PJA golfers to just give peers to everybody, or do you make deals with specific people? What's the approach?
Yeah, well, just we did something that's unlike anything. We did not work with golfers specifically and getting shoes on multiple professionals. We were really for the fans and getting fans at the Waste Management open to experience, Hey dude, with an interactive exhibit and doing things that just got attention.
And everybody's got a camera, bob, so everybody's posting on their own socials to evangelize the brand and the way that we activated at the Waste Management, but specifically to introduce a new pair of golf shoes that are coming out later this month.
Okay, golf shoes, you know, are traditionally firm, so hey dude, is making a golf shoe. You're talking about how soft they are. They absolutely are soft.
So one of the ways that you can really maybe you know, cut into a couple of strokes off your game is being comfortable and lighter. So they certainly grip, of course, which is an important part of golf. But I don't think we're advocating that we're for the professional golfer to win the Masters. We're for that weekend golfer who's out with his or her buddies and friends doing a couple of birdie juice before or after a birdie, and certainly on the nineteenth hole. We're really more a
fun spirit than a high performance golf shoe. But it's something you can wear and probably get a couple of more bogies than birdies.
Okay, what was the projected retail price?
I can't remember the price of those, but they'll be in the similar vein of what hey dudes are, you know, in the seventy dollars range and with pins and aces as a great partner. So just a fun way to further explore the brand.
Okay, is that something you started or was that started before you came to this brand.
Yeah, it's all part of a more edited assortment of who we want to work with and how we come to life with different partners, whether they're celebrities or whether they're brands or licenses, from SpongeBob SquarePants to Hot Wheels to Beetlejuice and on and on and on. Fun ways to connect fans of those properties to Hay Dude. And so that's something that we've been doing, you know, since I was at Crocs the first time around, we were doing that and now we want to bring some of
that to Hey Dude. And the Pins and Asis partners have just been great.
Okay, you come back to Hey Dude. I mean you had the Kentucky Fried Chicken, Croc, you had all that other stuff. Since you came back to Kroc, what initiatives have you started?
Yeah, so I joined in May May first, and you know, you lay out the strategy that I suggested earlier. And so one of the first things we did is, you know, one of the things I like to do is think opposites and a brand named Hey Dude, who is looking to appeal to a younger female audience while still you know, energizing. Our core is to bring Sidney Sweeney on board is our brand and beast hugely popular, is loved by lots of people as an international, internationally known young woman, and
it's just cool. She's smart, talented, but also just cool. And so that was one of the first moves that we made since I returned.
Let's stop with Sydney Sweeney. You're sitting in the office, you're brainstorming, and you say, Sydney Sweeney will be a good idea, you go through the channels, you know, what kind of reaction do you get? You know, the odds of her actually wearing Hay Dudes are not high. What's the incentive for her? There's always a monetary incentive. How do you convince her this is good for her? Well?
I think she recognized certainly where Sydney is from. I think herself and lots of her friends and family are Hey Dude fans. She's from up a certain neck of the woods, Idaho, Washington that way, where Hey Dudes are enormously popular. So she had an affinity for our brand. And because we're unlike anything, she could showcase a different side of herself, which really appealed to us as a brand.
It doesn't take herself too seriously. You know, she's known for being an elegant, beautiful woman and you know, oscar parties and all that kind of Hollywood showbiz. But she has a different side of her and this allowed her to showcase that in a really casual way. And I think that's what attracted her to Hey Dude, and.
Certainly what attracted Hey Dude to us to her. Okay, so she's in what did you do with her? Oh?
So she's in. So we started by just an introductory video of this is Sidney Sweeney on a rope swing
jumping into a lake. You know, just talk about how casual and unaffected she was by this, and then we put her in a new style, a fuzz lined slipper from Hey Dude Gone, couldn't keep him in stock And in just a couple of weeks, she's a huge part of our Spring twenty twenty five work that will be unveiling shortly and has a you know, helped craft it and it was a hugely important but involved partner to create what we're going to unveil in just a few
short weeks to again make people think differently about Hey Dude as a shoe that's not just for him, but is for her and is for multiple wearing occasions. And Sidney just does it in a really cool and Sidney like way that she has this magical ability to pull off this elegance that she has, but also this just girl next door kind of give somebody the business kind of way.
And so how many videos do you make with Sydney? Yeah, you know, a lot.
We do a lot of things to cut through not just a sense of humor and unlike anything, but also our own sense of fashion and style for the brand that you know, she's wearing it in that way as well. So lots of different things, because as I said earlier, the attention span of people is so short. We only need a few seconds of video of Sydney and lots of different few seconds of Sydney to have people see it.
And people are moving. You know that your thumb is always moving on your screen, scrolling up, left, right, wherever, and so once you see it, you stop and you got the message and you keep scrolling. But we got you, and Sydney makes you stop on your screen because of who she is. So we're just thrilled by that and we're excited to roll it out in just a couple of short weeks.
Okay, so we're talking about social media platforms. You have this deal with Sydney Sweeney. She's engaged. You do anything traditional, whint TV, anything or those.
Just off the table. Nothing is off the table. We're not doing those with Sidney Sweeney. We have done Connected TV with Hey Dude since I've been at Hey Dude, which is really when you're you know, when you're logging onto Amazon Prime there's a spot there, a hey dude spot there, and so we've been doing those things. It's television, but it's not television. Like perhaps we grew up knowing we're not doing any print today. But we do have
conversations about a little bit more analog. That really came up with the you know, the TikTok shutdown that was rumored and happened for a hot second, and maybe the move to analog is a you know, thinking opposites again, Bob, like, is there some things that we should be doing to connect with consumers who are not going to have this major platform. So all things are on the table. Of course, our website, SMS where we text message consumers about things
that they opt into. No radio, but the variety of social media that we do, and then experiential you know, part of this trick for any footwear companies to get
shoes on feet. So whether it's the Houston Rodeo coming up in a couple of weeks or Stagecoach where we'll be, or the waste management open places like that, we have huge activations to get our fans who always come by I love Hey dude, I've got five pairs or new folks to the party and say I've heard about it or I've never tried them on, and then we watched their face when they try them on, and away we go.
I did a little event in Marshfield, Massachusetts. Hey Dude is based outside of Boston, and there's this cool little event called Flannel Jam every fall. It's at the Marshfield Fairgrounds, And so I went on a Saturday with the team, and you know, we sold like five thousand dollars worth of hay Dudes in just a couple of hours out of a makeshift van, and you know, spending that Saturday listen to all these jam bands doing some great stuff.
The amount of people that were coming up to me that I love hay Dude, and the amount of people I saw wearing hay Dude that walked into the fairgrounds with them. So it's just a real exciting experience for me and showed the connection that we've got the folks that we've just got to continue to build this Hey Dude community and that's what we're after.
So when it comes to online, there's TikTok, there's x slash Twitter, there's Instagram reels, there's regular Instagram with photos there's Facebook, what works and where are you?
They all can work. TikTok is certainly our leader in the clubhouse because it's the fastest and it allows us to reach the most people. Our fan base has tripled since I've been at the brand on TikTok. But of course Facebook and Instagram and Instagram reels are a huge part of what we're up to. Twitter, where we have an account or x, we are not active on it. We just don't find that to be a productive use of our time. It's a different platform for a brand
like ours. Others do it well, but we're just not unlocking that. We want people to explore us through those sites.
Okay, how let me put your marketing hat on. We're in a political era where the Democrats are beaten to the ground. The Republicans are dominating both in social discourse and power. One of the things about the last election was, oh, the Republicans were on podcasts, they were here that in terms of it's mostly baby boomer some gen xers. What do they not know and should know about how you
reach customers today? Because we speak about the Democratic Party, they didn't And you live in this territory twenty four to seven. So if you were advising them, it doesn't necessarily have to be the Democrats. How do you get your message out?
Yeah, I think seems like the Democrats have a more popular message, but the way they say it or share it just does not come across as authentic as the guy that won. Say what you want about the President of the United States, and certainly there's been plenty written about him, but he just says seemingly what it's on his mind, without a filter, and that seems to connect. If you measure by the fact that he won the election,
that would say he connected. And I don't get the sense that the left does that to the same degree. It just feels more calculated, and Trump just comes across as real, which is how we started this discussion. Brands or politicians or anyone who just comes across as real, I think just has a better shot at success.
Well that's half of it, and that's really important. But in terms of you know, the ratings for cable television, you know they don't have even a million people watching. So has there been a complete shift of the customer to social media too, alternative outlets? And many people don't realize this. In the so called establishment or is it more well, something works here and something works there.
No, it's the it's the former. Like there, listen, I'm a gen xer. I'm astounded by my own adoption of social media. I'll give you an example. You know, I travel a lot in my role, and you know, one of the joys of travel in a weird way used to be you throw it. You check into your hotel room, you throw your bag on the ground right, and you turn the television on. I can't remember the last time
I turned the television on in a hotel room. I have an iPad and for the brief time I have I sit in the chair in the corner of the hotel room or on the bed, and I scroll social media a variety of things. Twitter to get my news, TikTok, to be informed or entertained, or to laugh, to get dining tips in the city that I might be in. This looks like a cool spot. I don't turn the television on unless there's a sporting event, and even that I can do on YouTube TV on my iPad. It's
not as big as screen. But so I'm astounded of my own personal adoption as a gen xer. So you know, my daughters are digitally native, so if that kind of switch happens to me, I mean just folks and kids that are born into this which is now a whole generation. They don't consume anything the way we did, which is why brands like Hey Dude and Stanley before that are looking to connect where they are and that's where they are.
Okay, you're a gen x er when you were out socially, when you're not working and you start talking about this, do you find the other people of your generation or the people that you interact with are saying, yeah, yeah, I saw that too, Or are they saying, oh, that's crap, I'm not Are you one an outlier or are you finding that many people are doing what you're doing.
I don't know that I'm an outlier, but I'm in the minority for sure. For a gen xer, you know, there's always the there's the misperception that TikTok is just a bunch of young girls dancing, and I know those folks come across my for you page every once in a while, But I'm looking for like where's the best pub in London? And there's lots of answers. I live in Boston, and so somehow I'm my for you page,
the algorithm or my geography. Some guy in a blue hat at Emmett's Pub in Boston never been there before. It turns out it's around the corner, and this guy's alleging it has the best poor of guinness in all of Boston. If it wasn't for TikTok, I wouldn't have known. It is a five minute walk from my apartment, and that is I mean, that's elixir of life. To know that there's people out there and these places exist. I never would have seen that on television, And Wow, how
exciting is this? And so I think I'm the outlier because people just think it's a waste of time. And I know, as so do millions of people, that it's where. It's the town square, and that's where you can learn so many cool things, fun things, interesting things. It's just an incredible thing. I've watched more videos about airplane turbulence because I'm so scared of turbulence when I'm flying that I feel better now because I hear all these pilots
telling me not to worry. And now I'm not going to see that on CNN or MTV or ESPN or just so man, it's so cool to be alive right now, to have all this at your fingertips. Which is why I don't turn a television on an hotel because I'm not gonna feel better about turbulence.
Okay, did you say this is my job? I need to know more about social media? This is a project? Or how did you get started?
Oh, I'm insatiably curious. Yeah, I want to know. I want to know what's around the corner. Personally, professionally. That is my life. I have an insatiable curiosity and an unmistakable sense of what's possible personally, professionally. So listen to when I was a kid, Bob. I'll never forget this. This is a real analogue, and viewers of a certain
listeners of a certain age will get this. When I was thirteen years old, I was fortunate enough my parents took my brother and I to Bermuda, which you know Bermuda, you know this is unheard of, and we stayed at the Southampton Princess. I don't know if it's still there, It doesn't matter. I was more interested in the Reuter's ticker behind the front desk of the hotel than I was about going to the pool. I couldn't believe something like this existed, that I was getting all sorts of
information in real time. Yeah, I'll never forget it. I can still see it through my mind's eye. I grew up in northern New Jersey, so I used to fall asleep to news radio eighty eight just also to get you know, there's always sports on the eights. So before the Internet, you couldn't get you know, it was Warner Wolf CBS at six thirty, and that's how you got your sports or you called sports phone, you know, get all the sports news instantly, dial nine seven six one
three one three. So like, these things are just this is just an extension of how I've been all of my life, and the fact that this all exists astounds me. So what is coming around the corner? AI? AI for good and for bad?
Yeah, it's okay, I'm interested in this. That's certainly the popular topic. Tell me what's coming around the corner and how it's going to affect both your business and the average citizen.
Yeah. Well, it's certainly going to allow us to tell incredible messages to people fast and in ways that inspire and interrupt. It's happening right now and it's still in its infancy. The ways that we can communicate, the ways we can interview and hire as an employer. It's all just a few short years away from major shifts. But from a marketing perspective and a brand building perspective, the opportunity and the danger you have is quite a responsibility
to do it right. You know, I was an astounded, you know last week that the Beatles want a Grammy in twenty twenty five using AI and what does that mean? You know, the Beatles is kind of a benchmark of so many things for so many people. Well, did that open the floodgates for it? Was almost a stamp of approval or was it something different or more? Really perplexed by that question and the outcome of that, but also thrilling in a way that that kind of thing can occur.
So it's a really amazing thing that you know, we're doing at hey dude, and doing it in small birds, mostly on the creative side. But we're going to see how that continues to evolve. But that's certainly a major thing of what's next.
So how are you using it on the creative side?
Just to certainly fine tune photo shoots. And we recently did a partnership, one of our collaborations with the brand Ferbie, you know, those acute little characters a fuzz line Ferbie shoe and our entire ad, if you call it ad, the experience and the way we communicated that was all
through AI. And there's you know, pundits that we're calling it the ad of the week just two or three weeks ago because it breaks through and it's a really interesting and how we did it was really innovative, and it makes you stop your thumb scrolling, and that's part of the game. And so there's other things dangerously going around, just you know, when we're recording this of celebrities being misinterpreted with AI about Kanye West, and I'm sure you've
seen today that's really really scary and terrible. And how we put you know, guardrails around that I don't pretend to know, but we're going to have to figure that out.
Okay, anything else you could say that it's around the corner besides AI.
Yeah, it's the thing that comes to mind, you know, most importantly, I think faster Ways to get you product is also around the corner. Of course, you know Amazon, you know you see these drone deliveries, which sounds you know, out of science fiction, but that's you know, that's coming. So it's just a matter of how interruptive it is or how distracting or annoying it is, and a level
of that that society is going to accept. But that's certainly people want things faster, they want it now, and if a drone or something can fly it to you, people are going to want that. And it's just a matter of how is it that also relegated regulated, and how's the experience not you know, an effrontery to people who are not ordering things. That's the trick.
Okay, you talked originally about fast and young females. Are you saying you want to activate young females because you have a fashion product or can you say across the board they are the most active and reactive.
Yeah, great, great point all the above. So, as I think I said earlier, you know, youth culture drives culture, right, but more than ever before, youth female culture drives culture. Women more than ever before, you know, are traveling and going out in packs. Women typically are bigger fans of
footwear than guys, they have a bigger community. In addition to the type group that they have, they also have larger communities and they like to share what they love and that influences their friends or their peer groups, and so all of those things lead us to that's where
culture is. And if more women can fall in love with a funny little brand with a funny little name, there's a there's a great opportunity there to reach more people because, as I learned from you know, my last place, people want what's cool, and they want what's cool in America. Around the world, people want what's cool in America, and women, young women are letting the world know what's cool in America.
Okay, Hey Dude has a male connotation. Is that a point of friction or you think about changing the name at some point?
No, not at all. It's not a neither. That is our name. It's a funny little name. But you know, forty percent of our businesses female consumers already, so there's no no worries there. We just need to showcase more female focused styles, certainly showcase more ways to wear Hey Dude for young women, and that's part of the what we're up to as well. Part of the Sydney Sweeney work and all those other things, but not not an impediment at all. In fact, you know, women call each
other bro dude. You know one of the top two three podcasts is Alex Cooper's Call Me Daddy. Right, So there's a power and ownership of these kind of things that women have taken. And as exciting time, let's assume you will have a product that you want to sell to males. Are you telling us that the best way to reach males is to reach the women and then they'll tell the males. That's certainly true. That is certainly true.
Certainly from a gift giving perspective. You know, a lot of guys are just hey, throw another new size eleven in the cart. You know, guys are like that, right, But guys also want what's cool, they want what's comfortable. Guys also want what's dependable, and so from a fashion standpoint,
most guys are fast fashion or they're just comfortable. And we want to make sure the guys that love us, and there's lots of them, stay in love with Hey, dude, but we certainly want to bring a lot more people into the tent.
Okay, you have all this focus on women, yet the conversation at large is the opposite. Why do people not know this extreme power of women question?
It's a great question. I don't know the answer to that.
I do.
So that's what I'm focused on with the Heydude team is making sure that we're bringing more people into the tent and recognizing the purchasing power, the cultural power, the community power of women in twenty twenty five.
Okay, you said you're from New Jersey. What did your parents do for a living?
My father was My parents grew up in the Bronx, New York. I was born in New York City. My father was in the United States Navy on the USS Wasp post World War Two, and he left the Navy and started fixing typewriters in New York City for IBM in the suit in the uh you know, the shoes carrying the case fix and typewriters, and he, like so many folks of his generation, worked his way to become an executive with IBM. We moved a lot as a
young guy. As a young kid, we moved a few times before I was ten years old, and my dad raised you know, me and my brother and did well enough that my mom could raise us. You know, my mom didn't work outside of the home, but she certainly worked because she had myself and my brother. We made her work hard. So we were fortunate to grow up in northern New Jersey for you know, since I was ten years old and my dad carved it out and is, you know, an incredible guy. We're nothing alike, but he
is an incredible guy. Still with us. Both my parents are, thank goodness, and that's what they did. They lived the American dream.
Okay that moving around as a young child, having to fit in, did that effect your personality for sure?
Yeah, it affects me to this day. So move to U born in New York City, lived upstate New York or Westchester, and then moved to Virginia and Illinois, all before I was ten. And so the fear of walking into a new cafeteria is still with me today. I don't like walking into office cafeteria. I don't like looking for somebody to sit with. That is was then and
it still carries with me all these years later. I'm certainly more comfortable than I ever was, and I certainly do that because that's part of the job when you're leading a company, but it's certainly part of my psychology and how I enter any room.
Okay, you have this anxiety, but concommonly, is there a positive element of this?
It's a good question. Probably not a positive quality to that. That's a I mean a positive quality of moving around having to interact with me. Oh sure, oh, I said, of course, yeah, of course, yes. You know, I had an appreciation for other things before I was ten years old. You know, I knew you know, I knew where things were. I knew what Chicago looked like. When I was nine, you know, I knew what you know, the nation's capital we lived in Northern Virginia looked like. I knew what
what I knew, the kids like the Bears. You know, you don't know these things, especially in the seventies, or you don't, but I did, And so it gave me an appreciation for maybe that always what's around the corner kind of a mentality that I had because I didn't know if we were ever going to be staying wherever we were because of my father's job, which was you know, thrilling, exciting, but also daunting when you get that we're going to move.
So so yeah, of course, I think there's a lot of good, but the anxiety of that cafeteria table, which I took to my daughter's Unfortunately, you know, we moved a few times, I sadly, you know, cursed my daughters with the same thing my father cursed me, and I put curse and quotes, of course, but one of my first questions through my girls when we moved is you know who did you eat lunch with? It wasn't what did you learn, It wasn't how school, It was who
did you have lunch with? And I would ask that question with my eyes kind of winced and my teeth gritted, because I know what that's like. And so I was transferring some of my whatever that is psychosis or anxiety on them unfairly, But it meant something to me because I know what it's like, and it hurt then, and I didn't want my daughters to feel the same thing.
So what's your personality? Are you more of a lone or outsider? Are you the type of person who has a million friends and is contacting people all day?
I have the same friends since I moved to New Jersey and fifth grade. We're all on a text thread every day. So I've got a tight circle of friends since I was eleven years old ten years old, which is an amazing thing to say, in an amazing gift. But then I make new friends along the way, and the friends that I make I'm really really close with and have influenced my life, you know, even my career.
Some of the most important people in my life are people that influence my career who I've ended up being the best of friends with. So it's tight. I'm not the life of the party ever, but I'm comfortable being alone. But the friends that I have are deep and meaningful and long.
So let's say I say, Hey, we're going to go to a party. You don't know anybody, none of them work in your business, so you're gonna say, hey, let's go. You say, well, you're gonna see Well, you know, maybe I'd rather stay home.
I would prefer not to go, but when I go, I'm you know, I'm an irishman, right, So I do have that certain gift of gab when I choose to gab, and I've got a lot of really cool stories to tell and a really good life experience that people like to hear. When I end up sharing some of it, so I don't wear the lampshade, but I can get after.
It, Okay, good student, bad student.
I was average at everything, average at everything, good not I don't know why, but average at everything, and you know, medium part of my class, if you know what I mean. But I was a late bloomer, you know. And I also just because of that moving around, I think I lacked a lot of confidence that I didn't know I was actually good at quite a few things when I
was in middle school and high school. That it turns out, you know, later in life, you start to realize, you know what, maybe I was better if I had some confidence, or had a different kind of coach or somebody, things could have been different then. But I'm not hung up on any of that. I just, you know, it was a late bloomer. I remember you couldn't you back in
those days, and maybe they still do it. You had to do like the eight mile run, you know, you had to run for eight eight minute eight minute run or something like that, whatever it was, eight minute mile, there you go, man, and something you know in middle school and I hated it, like I was out of breath, like I couldn't do it, you know, it was kind of a little chubby, little pudgy little guy. And my favorite baseball player at that age was Carlton Fists because
his nickname was Pudge. You know, it was like looking for connection and I couldn't do it like I just was. But you know, years later, I've run three marathons in under four hours. You know, So these things happen. Life is long, and if you're going to be hung up on who you were, well that's a waste of your life. And so the the things that have happened in my life and even just the last fifteen years have been extraordinary career wise, personally, so many amazing things.
So you graduate from high school, then what.
I go to college in New Jersey. Well, actually I started college at Northeastern up in Boston, and I hate to say it, I think I chose Northeastern because I was a giant and still I am a big fan of the Red Sox, the Bruins, the Patriots, and the Celtics. And a word to your listeners, that's not the reason to choose a college or university. But I was a huge fan of those teams and that's why I chose Northeastern. But I was too immature to know what to do.
My high school and grammar school friends were no longer with me, and I did not adapt well. And I also just didn't like the city environment. I wasn't ready for that then. So I transferred to a little known Rider University in New Jersey, and you know, graduated, I don't know two point eight, two point nine, you know, something like that. It was an unremarkable scholastic career. But I graduated, and I got a job right out of college.
But just before this, when you're going to Rider, yeah, are you living at home? Are you living in an apartment?
I'm living in the dorm. I was a resident advisor for two and a half years at Ryder, So you know, you got your own room. There's a little bit of evidence there right right right, And you got a phone, which mattered then, and you didn't you didn't have to pay for and I got a little bit of scratch, so I had some spending money. And you know, an unremarkable career at Ryder. That there's they wouldn't remember me, and they shouldn't remember me.
So you graduated, and you did what I graduated.
And this is the day, Bob, where you know one hundred envelopes, one hundred resumes, one hundred stamps, and you send them out. I can't even imagine this was a thing, just hoping it got there, hoping somebody opened it, hoping somebody would call you back. What And I got a call back? You know, my mom got a call back. You know, this is the day. You know, I was living at home and my mom would answer, Terrence, it's for you, you know, and it's your possible future employer. The
thought of that is so staggering today. But I got a job with the MWW Group, a PR agency in northern New Jersey. At the time, I think I was one of the first ten employees of the MWW Group. And now if you drive by MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, you'll see the W building on the other side of MetLife Stadium. So Michael Kempner and the group that hired me then still run it and grow it into a
huge agency. But this is really funny. So I get this job, right, and I'm an account coordinator at twenty two, twenty three years old, and you know, you're getting press clippings and you have to clip them out for the different clients of the agency from Burrell's or you know, and you're cutting and pasting them and using you know, glue tape to you know, this is what you did. And I filled in for the receptionist when she went to lunch, and I had to get the coffee supplies
every Monday morning for the office for the week. And that's what you do when you're twenty two. And they gave me a little account. This is a PR agency and I'm an account coordinator, so cut your chops on this, Terrence. And they gave me a little indoor amusement park in Paramus, New Jersey called sports World. And at the time whatever this is, nineteen ninety one, right around there, this indoor
amusement park was a pretty cool thing. It was a giant box at inside where bumper cars and cafeteria with you know, hot dogs and popcorn and rides and ball pits and all sorts of stuff, and it was a really popular place. What am I going to do with this as a PR account coordinator? You know, press release to say here, have your kid's birthday party here, or they got a new ride whatever. Not exactly exciting stuff. But one evening, just as I'm about to go home.
The desk phone, big giant desk phone rings and I pick it up and it's the owner of Sports World. It says, Terrence, get down here, Like, what's wrong? Because Terrence get down here with somebody hurt? Is anything wrong? He's like, no, Michael Jackson has rented the place for the night. What so, Yeah, Michael Jackson is here and he's rented the place for the night. We're closed, so all right now, I gotta be honest with you, Bob.
If the iPhone existed, then I probably would have gone down to Sports World to what to try and get a selfie with Michael Jackson. But it didn't exist. So instead of taking my iPhone, which didn't exist in nineteen ninety one, I got on the phone and I called every assignment desk that I had in my Bacon's Guide. I know where Michael Jackson is tonight. Called me back, I know where Michael Jackson is tonight. The phone rang like it was you know, so everybody called me back
and lo and behold. The next day and the next week, I had the biggest score in the history of the Young MWW group and change my career there. I promoted to an account executive and now I'm working with Continental Airlines, you know. And that's what can happen in life if you're ready for your audition. And so that was a gift to me, and that changed my career at the MWW group as a twenty three year old. Next thing I know, I'm on the runway at Continental Airlines in Newark,
New Jersey with Lloyd Benson, you know. So it's amazing what can happen in a young career if you're ready for the moment.
Okay, you go to Continental, play it out from there.
So I just didn't know if I liked doing what I was doing, and so I went to work for a nonprofit in northern New Jersey, a long term care facility and psychiatric hospital. Yeah, the real fun stuff, Bob, And.
Wait, wait just to stay there. Yeah, you're working with an amusement park, you're working with Continental era Lines. What is the motivation? I don't money? To get escape where you were? Why'd you do it?
I don't have an answer for that. Genius or stupidity or somewhere in between, because it wasn't the money. It was a nonprofit. But I just wanted to try something else.
And so I'm working for this medical center. It's a nonprofit, as I mentioned, and so one of my responsibilities was to put together an annual fundraising dinner, you know, the rubber chicken round table, and a whole bunch of donors and supporters arrive and I'm giving an appeal, you know, from the dais the main stage there with the podium, and I have a photo of this, which is a surreptitious photo that I didn't know I even had or
somebody took it. But in the front row, in the front table, with his back to me was a gentleman who the next morning called me and I thought, oh wow, I got one of these high rollers to write a big check to the medical center. Look at me, I've got a big score. And he says, let's go to breakfast tomorrow. We go to breakfast that I'm ready for him to write a big check, and he says, I want you to be my marketing manager for Amror Prize. I don't know this guy, never met him.
In my life.
And this was actually called American Express Financially Advisors at the time part of American Express, and now it's Amerorprize, which is one of the leading financial companies in the world, and so I go get my series seven, series sixty three, Series sixty five to sell a market financial products in northern New Jersey. And what luck, you know. And you know, I think he got my salary from like twenty six thousand to fifty eight thousand, which was ridiculous, you know.
But I'm now in a new field, and I bounced around the financial services for a while, and I passed another audition as I had this really cool idea to invite people to the movies to correct new customers. You know, we were looking for mom and pop to come in and talk about their financial goals and do a financial plan.
And so I invited them to the movies, your local cinema, and before for the movie, I would do a ten minute presentation on realizing life's streams through financial planning, and I would film movie theaters because everybody loves the movies. And out of that we would get a few appointments and people would come in to meet with financial planners and we did some good business that way. And one night an executive from Prudential. Again I'm from New Jersey.
Prudential is one of the leading employers in New Jersey and a powerhouse is in the audience, and she calls me the next day says you should come work for me in Newark, the headquarters. So I did, and Lisa is still one of my best friends today. She was just with my daughter in London a couple of weeks ago. But Bob, I hated it. I hated financial services. It was not for me. I really fell. I was a young guy, still thirty and a daughter one on the way, and I'm a vice.
Oh well, wait, just to take a side route here. Where do you meet your wife in when? Yeah, so I meet her.
We both had a summer job in college, and we knew each other from the hallways of our summer job. And one Friday evening on Route seventeen in Paramus, New Jersey, there was a Compact disc World And you and many of your listeners recognize the power of compact discs and CDs in the late eighties early nineties, and how Friday was payday and you made a pilgrimager. I did CD World on Fridays to just get what I needed to get. And so as I'm browsing through the s's Springsteen Southside,
little Steven Sinatra I am from New Jersey. She walks in and I recognize her from our summer job, and we talked for a few minutes. And then the next day we saw each other in the hall. What did you buy? Then we started trading CDs and now your two daughters later in all these years, so music again shows up in my life in an unexpected and surreptitious way.
Okay, since you met her and she's your age contemporary, what was she doing career wise? And to what degree was she advising you on your career?
So she spent thirty five years with a major accounting firm, one of the big I don't remember. I think it was Big eight when she started. He went to eight to five, you know, I don't know. She was with one of the last one standing just until recently. So thirty five years, and the gift that she gave us
was stability. She was working from home before COVID, twenty years before COVID, and knew how to balance all that, do an incredible job and raise two remarkable young women, two daughters that I mentioned earlier, And so that was an incredible gift to us. And she was able through you know, the firm's generosity because she did great for them. They did great by her that we could move to
the various places that I moved. Is this career arc that I'm walking you through or boring you with and starts to unfold and so an incredible gift that you know she received and that you know we were both fortunate to have.
So she's a CPA, she is not.
She she did a lot of the training and the things that CPAs and the firm needs to keep licensed and keep you know, keep them honest.
Okay, so you're in financial services, you hate it? Yeah, so what's the next step. So I'm in the headquarters. I'm a vice president of.
Marketing for Prudential. This should be the dream of every kid from New Jersey, right, you know the Devil's play in the Prudential Center, And it was, you know, I was bored of being bored because boredom is boredom. And a friend of mine calls me and says, hey, there's a company out of Dallas, Texas called foot Action that is relocating to Mahwan, New Jersey, and nobody wants to go. Nobody wants to relocate from Dallas to Mahwan, New Jersey. So you should talk to this guy that I know great.
So I talked to this guy and it happens to be Willie Smith. Will Smith, not the Fresh Prince, but Will Smith, and he's the vice president of marketing for foot Action in mahwan, New Jersey. And will takes a chance on this financial services guy and I go backwards in life from a VP at thirty two years old to a director of marketing for foot Action. Foot Action still exists, but at the time it was the leading footwear,
casual sneaker brand for young kids. And Bob within three months, I'm going from selling mutual funds, annuities, and long term care insurance to being on stage with Beyonce in Houston, Texas.
I have a photo to prove it. A couple of weeks later, I'm on stage at the Apollo Theater because we worked with Nike, because we sell a lot of Jordan's and air Force ones, and we opened a new store on one hundred and twenty fifth Street, and the only way to get tickets to the Nike wake up call at the Apollo is to buy a pair of Nikes at our new foot Action store on one hundred and twenty fifth Street. I am living the dream as
a music fan, as a footwear sneaker kid. You gotta be kidding me, like this is the greatest thing ever. And that didn't last too long because it was I guess eighteen months. Two years later, there was a giant, you know, town hall in the big Assembly area and we were told something's up. And if we were your brothers and sisters, we would tell you to get your resume together. And so I got my resume together, and so did Willie Smith. And Willie Smith ended up going
out to Saint Louis, Missouri. He was a Rochelle New Rochelle, New Rock City kid and Long Island kid, and he moved out to Saint Louis to become the VP of Marketing for Famous Footwear, one of the leading family footwear brands in the United States. And he calls me up. It says, Ryles, you got to come out to Saint Louis. I'm not moving to Saint Louis. I'm from New Jersey?
Are you kidding me? And let's put this. Willie is real, real persuasive, and so moved to Saint Louis, Missouri, and five years of incredible experience growth, learning a lot of things at Famous Footwear in Saint Louis, seeing incredible leaders too, like Diane Sullivan and others who are just showed me how to do things that I didn't know that I was going to have to do someday, because right now I'm already in all my life, I've outkicked my coverage.
And now I'm in Saint Louis and incredible experience there, incredible life moments there. And then I go pay a visit to Crocs. Famous Footwear sells Crocs at the time, still does, And I fly out to Colorado, where Crocs is based just outside a boulder, and I go into the Crocs boardroom to do my you know, spiel of why you should be spending more money Famous Footwear to sell more Crocs. And I do my thing in the boardroom, leave, and two or three weeks later, I get a call
from somebody at Crocs. We'd like you to be the guy that runs the America's marketing for Crocs, which you moved to Colorado. I'm not from Saint Louis. Colorado seems like a really cool place to live. My brother lives out here, as do my parents. They moved from New Jersey and the East Coast many years earlier, so let's give it a whirl. And we moved to Colorado and I'm the director of Marketing for Crocs and then the CMO for Crocs, and thanks to an incredible team, we turned that thing around.
Okay, Ros had a real negative reputation. Okay, people were making jokes about them, plastic shoes, etc. Ay, why did you take the job? B was everybody on the same page. Something's got to change in what we were steps.
Yeah, I took the job because it was a brand and people hated it. That smells like money. To me, Well, whoa, whoa, whoa.
People hated it. That smells like money. Explain that.
Yeah, So when I was the CMO of Crocs. When I started, there was a meme that had a photo of pair of Crocs and it said those holes are where your dignity leaks out.
That's good.
That hung on my wall. I looked at it every day as motivation. And again, nobody hated Crocs. It was just a brand that was made fun of and there was tension to that. And when there's that kind of tension, you know, as Reggie Jackson said, back in the seventies, they don't boo, nobody d and so aha, like there's something here and we just need to make ourselves more relevant. Crocs did not have an awareness problem. Everybody knew Crocs. But if we can make it more relevant, that was
the opportunity. And thanks to my colleagues, we made it more relevant and then some and helped turn Crocs into this extraordinary story in footwear and in brands and in culture. And again, how lucky am I? You know, it's almost like Forrest Gump. I just bump into these things or they find me and you change Crocs and change my life in the biggest way.
Okay, that's the general. Be more specific. Everyone knows Crocs. There's a negative take. What were the first steps and when did you realize you were onto something? And then where'd you go from there? Yeah?
The first steps was actually to We brought Drew Barrymore on board and it was the first opportunity we had to work with celebrity.
Whose idea was that.
It was a mutual decision. Certainly, the CEO of Crocs and I spoke about one of the quickest ways to cut through is celebrity partnerships. That's just the fact they don't all work, but is the fastest way. And Drew Barrymore, God love her brought us an instant credibility with people. It just changed the perception of the brain. Oh that's Drew Barrymore. Wait are crocs?
Wait?
What's this CrOx? Maybe there's something that I've been missing. And she's just an absolutely lovely soul. And she was the first thing to help us put a flag in the ground. Where the other thing that happens, Bob is you know, the the Hollywood agencies, they smell blood in the water. CROs has some money. I wonder who else they'd consider hiring. And that she opened the doors for other celebrities to begin working with crocs, to also widen our aperture of who to work with to get a
more global presence. People like John Cena we could started wearing crocs for us. Prianka Chopra also one of the loveliest women I've ever met in my entire life and kindest. She bought the whole crew when we wrapped, she bought them all champagne and toasted the crew. I mean just and so now people around the world are starting to see, wait that weird American brand that shoot with the holes in it. Drew Barrymore and John Cena and Priyanka Chopra
and then some Asian superstars in Korea and China. But Drew Barrymore helped open that aperture and widen it where now the brand was in a little different spot and you could start to see those green shoots and then really the.
The the the turning point, like this is the moment where the plot changes, you know, bang on the piano keys.
Here a young woman named Toria Roth, twenty three years old. She walks into my office on the CMO of Crocs. She just finished her internship with us and we hired her on full time. She walks in my office, sheepishly knocks on my door, you know, the CMO's door, and says, hey, t did you see this? And she shows me a photo of post Malone wearing Crocs and I didn't see it. She saw it, and it didn't take more than two
seconds to know what was up. And so Kerry Macker from Universal Music Group that represented post Malone, she gets in touch with us and we create the first celebrity collaboration with Crocs, the post Malones and it crashed our website. This is one of those moments, Bob, that I can see unfold and slow emotion. It's a big deal to the company. We've never done something like this before. We're about to go live at nine am in Colorado or ten am in Colorado. We get the entire company into
the giant cafeteria assembly area. We have the big screens up with our data points to see this first sale, and and we go live and the system crashes. There were so many people. We were not prepared for it. And I'm the guy like, I'm the ringleader, the pt barnum of it all. And it was a mortifyingly excitingly incredible experience. I knew we just crashed crocs dot com. Everything changes from here on out, and it did.
Okay, Just to go back a step, celebrities are not cheap. There are some companies with huge marketing budgets. Others don't believe in it. You know, how do you decide what percentage of you know, revenue to dedicate to these people in terms of return? Is there some math involved? It purely a hunch.
For me, It's all the above. I do have an eye and thanks to Toria Roth. She saw this, and so post Malone at that moment was on the come up. So there were ways to afford Post Malone then. And the next up was Luke Combs. He hadn't hit yet, but I saw this guy through social media and just you know, just constant reading and you know that curiosity, and he started to appear in different places that I'm looking for new music, like okay, who's this Luke Combs guy?
And then you see a photo of him, like this is a Crocs guy. So he was on the come up also, and so but then you do some math. You do how many Instagram followers they have, and if ten percent of those, you know, go to our website and five percent convert, what kind of dollars and cents could there be here? You do those kind of rough calculations, but it's also hunch. It's also kind of who their
audience is and their trajectory. And that's happened a lot in my life of betting on folks and also being a leader who listens to you know, Torrio who's twenty three, or Pejor Rodriguez who came into my office. He grew up in Puerto Rico and he said, at do you know who bad Bunny is? And I didn't, but he did, and he knew the impact that bad Bunny would have for Crocs and he was right. And so to be a listener and a leader who's open to good ideas
can come from anywhere has transformed brands. And if you're just close minded, and if you think you have all the answers, then you're probably not going to win. But you do have to have some of the answers.
Okay, But there was the traditional Croc shoe back not long after the Croc started, they started to put fur on them and stuff like that. Forget that. You now have all the celebrities involved, you start changing the product. Show me about that.
Sure, well, with a great product team, you know. So I was the CMO, not the chief product officer. But now it's a similar strategy. You build the core. And we returned under my marketing leadership, we returned to the classic Croc. Kroc was doing lots of different stuff when I got the gig, and we just brought it back to basics. And there you build the core and then you add more. And the fantastic product team started to, Yeah, put fuzz in crocs, which is a huge seller to
this day. Add height do partnerships with Christopher Kaine or Balenciaga to get just that different kind of style. And then gibbets, those little things that you put in the holes, have been an incredible success story because it allows people to personalize their crocs, which is, you know, such a
vital part of contemporary society. And so so the combination of new product introductions and celebrity partnerships and then it became like the Got Milk Mustache bob where everybody wanted to wear the milk mustache and almost any celebrity or brand that we called who wanted to create their own crocs. And that's something that is still an active success story today.
Ye know, from my perspective, the gibbets started with the public and then you got involved. Is that an accurate description.
No, We started to we were photographing our shoes naked, which makes no sense. We were selling gibbets, but we were not photographing them and not encouraging people to do that. So we got behind it and then our fans started to take over, and that's when you know a hit. You know, our fans started to label Crocs fully loaded, you know, when you fill all twenty six holes with gibbets,
and it allows people to express themselves. And that's another key component of Crocs's success is the ability to just personalize something you wear and extend your own personality, whatever that may be to the brand. And our product team just continued to innovate and still does at Crocs. And it changed my life where people started writing articles about me, which again, how did this happen to this guy from
New Jersey? But it did. And then I got a call about his bottle company called Stanley that nobody had heard of, including myself. But you know, it's not every day that they're calling a CMO for a president's job. And I should go for it. I should try and grab this breast ring this guy from you know, but for the grace of God. You know, my father was a typewriter repair man into an executive. But for the grace of God, I'd be walking a beat somewhere. You know, President me, Let's give it.
A whirl a little bit slower. You get an email or the phone ring as they say, what and how do you ultimately decide to take the job.
Well, it was a similar experience to CROCS. So now I knew when I joined CROCS it did not have an awareness problem, had a relevance opportunity. Stanley had an awareness opportunity. It's a you know, one hundred year old brand, just known for quality, known for this green bottle that people love. It's been in you know, it's probably somewhere in you know, Connecticut or you know where you grew up in somebody's attic, somebody's garage, and most people didn't
even know it. It was like, oh, yeah, that that''s that green bottle that my dad used to have. Well, my mom she took it to school every day where her soup. She was a teacher back in the sixties or so. All right, wait a minute, this is a there's a heritage here. How cool is that to get the keys to that kind of thing. So if we can make it relevant and increase the awareness, we might
be able to do something. And this might be a really interesting president's job, which I shouldn't have no business having.
How did they find you?
I think as yeah, it was a search firm, you know, because I started to get a little attention for the Crux success. You know, undeserved attention. But you know, it's like a quarterback. You get the attention, you get the blame. And so people started to see what was happening at CROCS, and my name was, you know, somewhat attached to it. And so I was getting lots of calls for other CMO jobs and all things like that, President mat you know, so I thought I was going to be Governor Corleone,
President Corloni. Yeah, so let's go for it, and that it turned out. I decided to do it in February of twenty twenty.
Uh oh, okay, just to stay on this, ay, where is Stanley located?
B how much revenue in a year?
So Stanley's based in Seattle, Washington. And when I joined, Stanley was a seventy million dollar brand known for the Hammertone Green bottle. That's an American classic. You know, if you watch the Festivut episode of Seinfeld, Kramer's got it in his pocket. If you've watched Off the Space when they keep moving Milton and his Stapler, he's got his Stanley. The Hammertone Green is bedrock and helped build America.
Okay, a couple other questions, FIRA, way, what other products does Stanley have.
Yeah, lunchboxes, different drinkwear, specializing in drinkwear and lunchboxes, and then outdoor camping gear. You know how many you know, meals were made around the fire in the outdoor with Stanley over the last you know, seventy five hundred years. Is part again of American heritage and tradition. So so I know that that exists and quality. It's known for just quality and a real rabid core fan base is almost the wrong word, you know, just and advocates and
just lovers of the brand. And it almost like a family heirloom and an inheritance. My dad was a Stanley man, my mom was a Stanley woman. That kind of thing.
Okay, so you get the job. You're living in Colorado. The companies in Seattle, it's February of twenty twenty. Yeah, do they say you have to move? What happens on that level? And obviously it's the beginning of COVID.
Yeah, so was planning on moving to Seattle, had a place downtown ready to roll. And then March or twenty twenty hits and this is I accepted in right before COVID and then COVID hits and I join first week in April. And my first reaction is what did I just do to my life? This high flying? I'm not high flying at all, Bob, I'm a CMO that's had some success at CROCS. What did I just do to my life? There is no office to go to, Seattle
is closed. You got to remember, like in twenty twenty, none of us were on teams or we're just zoom like it was occasionally, And so what did I just do to my career? To my life? But you know, I made a decision. We're in it and back to listening. So one of the things that you do when you're a new leader I hope people do, is you listen to your team what should we stop? Start and continue?
And on a Friday afternoon, I check in with Lauren Solomon, who is one of Stanley's brilliant saleswomen, and I asked that question, wh should we stop, start and continue? And I've listened to lots of people, and Lauren says, there are these three women in Utah that she has become aware of that have been actually buying this forty ounce adventure tumbler of ours and selling it on their own and they're seeing some success. So my CROCS instincts immediately crackle. Okay,
wait what is this? Who are these? And she tells me about these three women who call themselves the buy Guide out in Utah and that they had taken a liking to this quencher, and so the team immediately starts to.
Do it, just because we're going back there, firewing. How many were they buy.
Hundreds on their own dime and they were taking the risk, and so they were seeing success. And so they had their own following of a few, you know, million or so followers on the by Guide, and we're telling their followers how much they loved this product. And so, again back to what I had just done at CROCS, I recognize this pattern thanks to Lauren pointing it out and the risks that the buy Guide were taking on their own before I showed up. But this is this is
gold dust to me. And so we make an arrangement with the buy Guide to have them further evangelize this product, and then with them we started to create new colors.
What does that look like? Further evangelize the product?
Oh, to get really behind and get paid for it instead of taking the risk getting compensated for the bet that they had already made on this little product on their own and help us start something. And that's how it works. That's social media in a nutshell. And so we started to sell a few thousand and then lots of thousands, all on Stanley nineteen thirteen dot com. And so certainly the margins are great. They're getting they're getting a taste, as we would say back in New Jersey,
and we got ourselves a little hit. And then we started to introduce a new another new color or two. And then with this, armed with this data, we could go to some of our key accounts that were just carrying the traditional Stanley's. So we're seeing this unlocked with
young women. You should give us two feet of shelf space, and they did, and that two feet became six feet, became eight feet, which became an entire corner of Dick sporting goods and the cultural phenomenon that became the Stanley Quencher. I was born exactly like I described it, more or less, and new colors, new surprises, new collaborations, and what the crux experience that I had. I know how to do some of this stuff. I know how this should work.
And we got after collaborations that also changed the entire you know, complexion of the brand.
Okay, a little bit more granular. You're having this reaction from the Women in Utah. You're selling on the website. You go to Dick's give us a chance than.
What we gave, point to lots of places to say, give us a bigger chance. But we had the math, you know, thanks to our team, thanks to Matt and Helen and others. They were carefully managing these relationships to start to grow it out. But we had the data and so that was another part of the magic. It was all happening on heydude dot com and now we
can share it. So it was a safer bet for these big retailers to start to take a chance on us, and for some of these brands, and for Stanley, for everybody. It's been one of the biggest success stories of this century.
Uh oh, okay, you got the Women in Utah. Now you're selling on the website. You have these accounts Dix and other plane what is driving adoption? What is driving sales?
Well, shelf space for one, and then the use of social media. The buy Guide in particular, starts to get us started in the influencer and affiliate game where we could work with other beyond the buy Guide, affiliates and influencers to start to evangelize this product. And it also starts the fact that it's an incredible product. I mean it starts there. It serves so many purposes, but then it just becomes a cultural phenomenon through our use of
social media to evangelize it. There was no TV, there was no radio, There was hardly any traditional marketing behind the Stanley product. It was all through influencers and affiliates and women. And like I said earlier, women create community. They decide what is cool, and they chose authentically the Stanley Quencher, and off it went. And then we would certainly fan the flames with new colors, new accessories, new partnerships. I was on TikTok back to not turning the television
on anymore. I was scrolling through TikTok one afternoon and video crossed my for you page of a young artist singing to a pretty sizable audience, and the video was taken from behind her, behind the stage. And let's just say the video made its rounds because of this artist's rather ample backside, And so I then saw a video of this artist commenting on that video and she referred to her backside as her dump truck. I was like,
who is this woman? Like, she's so first of all, she's beautiful, second of all, she's just cool and is own this and take ownership of this kind of misogynistic leering video that was on TikTok And wow, who is this woman? So I saw her name and my next move is I go to Spotify and I find her. On Spotify, I find her latest release. I go down the track listing and I see one of the tracks is called Watermelon Moonshine. And with my eyeball, bob, Watermelon
Moonshine is a Stanley Quencher color. So I write Ellen on our team, on our product team, I said, hey, can you please create a watermelon moonshine color Quencher. You can't be wrong, And within two days she fires me back a cad of a watermelon Moonshine Quencher. And I
reach out to this artist's label on LinkedIn. I connect with Donna McQueen and I said, hey, would you be interested in a Stanley Laney Wilson collaboration because what do you have in mind, and I said, how about watermelon moonshine, and off we went, sold out twice in less than two minutes, and the unboxing videos of Laney Wilson watermelon Moonshine quenchers were everywhere in twenty twenty two. So it's these kind of things that just continued to ignite it.
And then lots of other artists and brand collaborations from love Shack Fancy to Wicked, to Olivia Rodrigo to too many to count, all similar to Crocs wanted their own Stanley quencher. And then we were parodied on Saturday Night Live, and then there are riots and target over the latest release,
and then it's all over the world. And then of course there's the fire response video that I made that people write about still every single day, which was back to TikTok, my adoption of TikTok personally and moving fast.
Tell that story because not everybody's familiar with it.
So one Wednesday afternoon, I forwarded by somebody on our team a TikTok video of a woman who's car caught on fire, and she shows the camera her car's caught on fire, and in the couple is her Stanley and she pulls it out of the cup holder and shakes it and it still has ice in it after a car fire. So somebody sent that video to me on a Wednesday, and Wednesday night I wrote the team and
said I'm going to buy her a car. I we and the next morning, Thursday morning, I roll into the office in Seattle, and I asked Chloe, one of our young marketing associates, to get the phone that has our TikTok account on it. You know, we have a Stanley phone at the time. It's not my phone. Said bring it into the boardroom with me and merchandise some products behind me. And I said, hold the phone up like it's a selfie. And I said what I said live,
no scripts, no briefings, no nonsense. It was just what I think anybody would have done if they happened to be the president of the brand. That this woman has featured our product in the most heroic way a car fire and there's still ice in the Stanley. And I respond, I don't remember exactly what I said anymore, but Danielle, I hope you're safe. Thanks for showing the product in such a wonderful manner. People keep writing that we should
buy you some new Stanley's. Well, we're certainly going to buy you some new Stanleys, but we also want to replace your vehicle. And I had to Chloe press send. She said, are you sure? Said yes, and she pressed send, and then it was like a movie. I went back around my day. But then people started texting me Tea, you know, you're blowing up on TikTok. No, my daughter, Dad, you know, like you're blowing up on TikTok and Bob.
One hundred million views later, people know that video. They've seen it too many times to count in too many languages, languages I don't even recognize. Well stopped in airports from people, and it solidified the quality of the product. That's what it was about, and taking care of a consumer who we care about. And she was a fan of ours, and I like to think anybody would have done that. I just did it the next day, and I just did it. I didn't script it. I just said it.
And maybe that's why I connected, which is what I said earlier. It's authentic, genuine and fast and off it went, and it helped change the complexion of a brand that was already winning.
Okay, how did you get her the money, how did she buy the car and what car did she get?
So we got in touch with her obviously through TikTok, because she'd seen the response, of course and was blown away by the response. And we just got in touch with her and we asked her what car she wanted and she told us, I can't remember what. We got her a Mazda, a Mazda something, and we contacted the local dealer where she lived in the Washington, d C. Maryland area, and we told the dealership we want to buy it. Let's take care of it all and put the big red ribbon on it and bring it to her.
And we did that within four to six weeks of that first video and delivered on our promise, my promise, and really, you know, solidify the quality of the brand where that video is still shown every single day. I had a funny story. One of my best friend Sons is a sophomore at Elon in North Carolina, and he texted me a photo of me on his classroom screen that were talking about marketing, you know moments, and like, you know, Terrence, they're talking about you in my class
So that's cool. So it's just it's continually talked about is like a smart marketing move, and it was just a real thing. It wasn't of course, it was marketing. I'm not stupid. People aren't stupid. But it was just a real reaction to something. And you see opportunity for your brand when it's reinforcing your quality and taking care of a customer.
Okay, so the change in sales dollar wise for the Stanley Cup.
Yeah, So, as I said earlier, when I joined in twenty twenty, Stanley was a seventy million dollar business and as you know, we reported at the end of twenty twenty four we were seven hundred and fifty million, so you know, ten x in four years, and I'm sure those numbers continued in twenty twenty five, so seventy to
seven hundred and fifty million in four years. But beyond the dollars, it's the you know what, people don't even know how many times throughout my tenure there and even to this day, people just refer to it as a Stanley, like do you know, like the how amazing that is that people refer to it as like Q tip or Kleenex or z it's the Stanley Like that is the that's the case study and all the things that we did as a team to do that. Why know me, It wasn't me, It was all of us at Stanley.
I made some big decisions, hired some great people that ran with things and made it better. But the fact that it's just known around the world and it's known in silhouette as a Stanley that is an incredible thing to have been a part of. And what I shake my head in disbelief no matter where I go, Bob.
Like I was at a college campus giving a little presentation a couple of months ago, and walking around the campus before my presentation, I saw nine Stanley's, six pair of crocs and four hey dudes, And I started my presentation saying, what's nine plus six plus four? And all these eager college students raised their hand to yell out nineteen like really really, like now that's my career history on your campus right this morning I saw nine Crocs, six stand or whatever, and and do you want to
know how it happened? And that kind of story.
So, so how about the other Stanley products?
Yeah, well, the rising tide lifts all boats, right, so you know, Stanley became some of the fun stuff was seeing dads who have their green Stanley convincing their daughters on TikTok that these daughters like, Dad, I need to Stanley.
This is new, this new company is new, and it's like, sweetie, like I've had this Stanley for forty years, or this was your grandfather's Wait no it wasn't, dad like those kind of fun things to enhance the brand, and then new product introductions back to build the core and add more. In this case, we did it a little bit differently.
We started from the outer and worked in to increase all the different categories that Stanley had and it's incredible success story beyond just the Quencher, but the Quencher is a global phenomenon that is a real incredible thing that the team did.
Okay, you're no longer there, although you're there for a while. How do you prevent it from being a fad?
By introducing newness, by continuing to surprise and delight with new collaborations with new colors, materials, finishes, accessories, all of those ways, and then great merchandising too, you know, and with you know, great partners who are giving you shelf space. For two to really give authenticity and you know, so many brands, so many consumers look for their retailers to give them the to be the editor right of this
is what's cool, this is what they should have. And when you've got that incredible shelf space, you want to continue to innovate around it and build scarcity. That was the other thing that we did really really well at Stanley and Crocs. What I learned at Crocs. You know, the reason why the post malone sold out in a second is because there weren't a lot of them. And
people want what they cannot have. And so the more you do that, you don't want to frustrate that could happen to but you want to people want what they cannot have, and so when you balance that really well, it extends things. But also it has to be a great product. Crocs are a great product. Stanley is a great product. Hey dude, it's a great product. So fads come and go. Great products stand the test of time.
Okay, So you have this great success with a quench and you are aware of scarcity works for you, how do you decide how many to make and where to put them?
A little bit of feel, a little bit of Instagram followers, a little bit of sign ups for to be notified of the next launch of things. So all of that goes into the calculus of how many you want to create. And again, if we're working with artists, we do a little bit of Instagram follower math, but we we want to typically you know, sell out, you know, that's what keeps the fire going. We want to put a cap on it, and we always did, certainly while I was there.
What's the best way to introduce splash make people aware that there's one of these new limited products social media.
Certainly, if it's an artist, they're going to tell their fans, you know, Landy Wilson, Hey, y'all, well, my new watermelon moonshine is dropping and her fans devour that, as do the artists and brand choices that the brands choose to work with. So it's certainly social Obviously, email notification and you know, sending an announcement or an invitation to our
guest lists of who is following the brand. And then obviously in store, some of our target launches caused complete and total chaos and target stores where certainly towards the end of my tenure, maybe still today, I don't know, you know, there was a two limit, you know, two quencher limit that you could purchase, so that caused an additional frenzy and in some cases some really terrible behavior
from customers. And with the iPhone, you know, those things get on video and those are all over the news, and that doesn't really hurt a brand. It shows the frenzy, but it's not something that you're after. You don't want anybody get hurt and you're not looking for that. It's just the Sometimes it brings out the worst in people.
So you have all the success at Crocs in Stanley, to what degree did these companies do corporate publicity?
Very little, very little? You know, Crocs then and now is a very humble brand, despite an incredible track record from you know, decades long track record of success and global success. Hey dude, we I'm sorry Stanley.
We did one.
CNBC piece where they came out to interview me and some colleagues in Seattle, and but not too much you know press, you know, a couple of articles from the President to talk about the brand, but it was by and large consumer consumer press, entertainment press, culture press that helped continue to fan the flames.
Okay, did you have a PR person or was it all organic?
All the above, all the above, terrific PR person who managed those things, and then some of the PR was just organic, you know. And the car fire spawned lots of articles, and the frenzy caused lots of articles, and not all of them were good. There was one article I remember reading that, you know, some of the frenzy that was occurring was you know, it's not the best of human behavior, and people were blaming me for it by name like, well, you're all fast something like I'm
paraphrasing it. But while we're all quick to blame all the women who are beating each other up and pulling hair at Target, shouldn't we really be blaming Terrence Riley? Like you know, these kind of things start to, you know, creep into your life.
Okay, just to stay there. Yeah, did you respond?
Never? No? No, no, no, no.
I mean I know that from my own life. You never respond. That's their goal. But did you know that because your knowledge of social media that you don't respond.
No, just instinct or you know, you know, what's have you ever seen a movie Chef with Jon Favreau and uh, what's his name? The reporter at theater goes, I buy ink by the barrel, buddy, Like, you're not gonna you know, you're not gonna win that. In fact, the car fire video, you know that the PR folks and the PR agencies and all the PR pundits were saying, like, you got to make a big deal out of giving her the car.
And you know, we were invited on the Today Show or Good Morning America one of those things, and listen like, I'm of the same ego as any of us, Like, hey, to go on the Today Show as a marketer or Good Morning or whatever. It was, yeah, like that's of course, that's it's not that you're suppose to do that, but it kind of would have ruined it. Like my response was just real, it was just me. I happened to be
the president. But it wasn't some focus group, let's talk to a bunch of people and get a lot of points of view. It was just me. The next morning, most people didn't even know I did it. And so then hey, let's give her the car on the Today Show and do that whole thing. And I wanted to, but it was my mother. I told her, I said, hey, we're going on Today Show and my mom said, don't do that. I said, why your son? You know, I want to make you proud. Mom, your son's on the
Today Show. She goes, don't do it, and she was right.
Well, she said don't do it. Why did she say not to do it?
Because she knew it would it would ruin it because it was real and it was real, and so if we started to put a shine on it and started to catch our own bouquets, it just wouldn't It wouldn't have been right, you know. And so she grew up in the Bronx. She's as real as it gets. She was right. So always listen to your mother.
Okay, you had this incredible success. Were you compensated accordingly? Sure?
Yeah?
Yeah? Did all right? Okay, so then maybe you say, instead of getting a new job, I'm not gonna work again.
My parents are from the Bronx. My father fixed typewriters in a suit in the sixties seventies. That's not what you do. So it's not about the money. I made more money than I'd ever thought i'd make in my life. Like I did, I did well, you know, I think my guidance counselor in high school told my parents I'd been underachiever. It's not about that. It's never been about that. I can't believe I'm in the spot, Bob. I can't
believe I'm talking to you. I'm actually wondering what the hell makes me interesting that you'd have me on your podcast when I see your guest list. But I've somehow, with your great teams, connected with culture more than once. You know, you walk down the street, you're going to see people wearing crocs, carrying Stanley's and wearing hay Dudes. And I had a little something to do with all
of that, and so that's a pretty cool thing. So now, hey, dude, is this eight hundred million dollar company that most people don't know about, Like, we could make hay Do the leading casual footwear brand in the world. Why not us? That's worth a shot, and I'm taking it. And I could have stayed selling a lot of Quenchers. Okay, you just expressed a level of confidence in yourself, and you talked about not having confidence in the high school. What
triggered the confidence? No, I don't think I have any confidence. I'm just confident that with a great team we could turn hate dude into one of the leading casual footwear brands in the world because it's open space. Who is the leading casual footwear brand in the world. If I ask ten people, I get ten different answers, all great companies, and so why not, hay dude, because we're a great
little product. And so that's the thrill of it. It's back to what's around the corner, that insatiable curiosity and the unmistakable sense of what's possible. This might be possible, and so I should try it.
Okay, but let's let's go back. How did you decide to leave Stanley in addition not having the president's titlely your new role?
Well, I am the president of Hey dude, Oh you are? I am? Yes, so ali of miss No, that's okay. So CROCS has a brilliant CEO for many many years. He was the one that gave me the CMO job at CrOx and he's still there. Anderye is an absolute brilliant man, highest of integrity. And Crocs. The president of CrOx is Ann Melman, who's equally talented. She used to be the CFO of CrOx and now hey dude, I'm
the new president of Hey dude. So two presidents of two brands reporting into the CEO of Crocs, and it was just an exciting opportunity to again get the keys to an eight hundred plus million dollar footwear brand. Who gets that in life it shouldn't be me in my head, but somebody believes in me and is believed in me before. So driver like you Stole It, Bob. One of my favorite movies of the recent era is sing Street and driver It like You Stole It is one of the
songs in singh Street. So somebody threw me the keys like they have before, and I'm going to drive it like I stole it and encourage our teams to do the same thing because it's possible. And I've just happened to be to live that more than once.
Okay, you're at Stanley, you're having this great success. How does this opportunity come on your radar? And how hard of his decision is it to leave?
Well, the CEO of Crocs were hired me once before as the CMO. So I got a call say, hey, would you be interested in coming back? And I was you know you're a skier, right Bob?
And oh yeah, you know.
What happens when you get to the top of the mountain. He turned back down and I got to the top of the mountain at Stanley, my mountain at least, and I believe there's certainly maybe a couple of a couple more feet first Stanley to climb, but then more at Stanley than anybody dreamed possible, certainly more than I dream possible,
although I dream big. This is a whole other level of So give the keys to Matt Navarro, the guy who I had the good fortune to hire, helped me build Stanley, and now he's the new president of Stanley. It doesn't get better than that. When I was a CMO of CROCS, I hired Heidi Cooley, and when I left CROCS, she took over a CMO and what she's done with Crocs's more than I ever did with Crocs. So like this, these are gifts that I've been given, and I think I've passed it on a little bit.
And both of these brands will flourish thanks to other great leaders that I happen to bring on board. And boy, that's a pretty cool little coaching tree to borrow football parlance.
Okay, so you have this great success and it's a public success. Did other offers come down the pike?
Yes, yeah, okay, Yeah, a lot of people called, but it just wasn't right. There's it wasn't right. You know. I think what you want to bring, like you want to win the Super Bowl with the Browns, you know, you want to win the Super Bowl with the Lions or the Bills or the Vikings. Right. A lot of the brands that were calling just they were already successful. They were already They didn't need that, and I wouldn't
get no satisfaction out of that. Hey, dude's also really successful, but there's more to go get and there's a lot of people that don't know about it. And now that's my job with a great team to fix it. That's stuff. And if we can do that and we already are, that's like bringing the Browns or the Lions or you know, to the super Bowl, and that's what you want, right, Okay.
When Jeffrey Katzenberg was number two at Disney, the expression was, if you don't come in on Saturday, don't even think about coming in on Sunday. So are you the type of person who's essentially working around the clock, And is that what it's required.
I don't have an off button, but I do not expect that from anyone. I rarely emails on the weekends. Rarely, I mean once every two or three months, that kind of rare. I'm always on and I'm always looking for the connections that can ignite a brand. And see Landy Wilson, see Luke Combe, see all of the car fires, see all that. So my antenna is always up. But that's just a personal wiring. I'm highly competitive. I want to win at part cheesy if that still exists, and I
also want to win on the peloton. I want to win. So I don't know where that competitive fire started to happen. And I'm not always going to win. And I don't win everything, not even close, you know. But I try and be the best that I can be as often as possible, and it's somehow kind of worked.
Okay, so what is your favorite Springsteen album?
Oh? You went albums? Uh favorite Springsteen album is The River?
Okay, Well you said albums, so then you were well you thought I was gonna ask tracks.
Oh I didn't know what you're gonna ask me. I just wanted to. I'm from New Jersey, so it's the law. So my favorite Bruce song would have to be Frankie, but nobody knows that one. And so the one I listened to the most to get fired up is Growing Up Live off of seventy five eighty five, the live version, because it's.
Yeah, yeah, I know, certainly know the song. My favorite, my what I used to get fired up was Candy's Room of course off Darkness. So did you see the River tour a few years ago when he redid it?
I did? I did. I've seen him on every tour since. Born in the USA. That's when you know again, as an eighteen year old in New Jersey in nineteen eighty four eighty five, you know, you talk about a local hero. And I've been chasing that ever since. I've seen Bruce more than seven times and five different countries, and I'm one of those guys.
But it's.
It's chasing something that hit me. It got into my veins. August nineteenth, nineteen eighty five, was the first concert I ever went to of anybody, and it was Bruce at Giant Stadium. And what I've been chasing Bob is, they say, certainly the music and his performance and the band in the street band, But the moment when the house lights
go down is my favorite moment in life. And time stands still for those twenty thirty seconds when the lights go You've been waiting for it, right and the lights go down, and there's the roar of the crowd, and then the band comes out one by one and it's happening, but it hasn't happened yet, and time stands still in
this space. And then he comes out out last, and he comes to the mic and he counts off, and the minute he starts counting off, it's over because it it's now, it's it's ending, it's and that time stands still in those precious twenty to thirty seconds whatever it is between the house lights and him coming up to the mic and usually counting off as we know he does. And that is why I've seen him seventy five times.
Time stands still. And if you can make time stand still, that's a pretty cool magic act.
So have you sent Bruce A Stanley the Dudes or pro?
I have not. I have not. I came close once to sending little Stephen a Purple Stanley because he just has that, you know, aesthetic in his personal life but I just know.
Well, I mean, it's one thing to send it and literally not ask for anything.
Yeah, I just I don't know, I have not I've thought about it more than once. But it's uh, you know, sometimes you just want to keep your heroes and all that at Bay. It's kind of still Listen. I'm fifty eight years old. I first saw Bruce and you know when I was eighteen, I kind of want to keep all that at Bay because it's still that fantasy world and it uh yeah, it's so it's chasing and it never would have happened.
Well, generally speaking, you don't want to meet your heroes. Yeah, very few, very few of them. Some of them do live up to the rep but the something that you believe in most absolutely do not, and it's really disillusion can't listen to their music for a while. In any event, Terrence, I want to thank you so much for telling us your story telling and informing my audience and what's going on in career wise with these products. Thanks again, Thank you Tears. Next step this is Bob Left stock
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