20VC: From a $1.1M Acquisition to $1.4BN in Revenues; The Meteoric Rise of Hoka Running with Deckers CEO, Dave Powers

Dave Powers serves as President and CEO of Deckers Brands, a global footwear and apparel company where he focuses on the company’s five high-performing brands: UGG®, Teva®, Sanuk®, HOKA One One® and Koolaburra®. Prior to Deckers, he held executive leadership roles at Converse and Timberland, where he led worldwide retail merchandising, marketing, visual and store design as well as the creation of a sustainable line of footwear and apparel. In Today's Episode with Dave Powers: 1. The Unlikely CEO of a Global Footwear Company: How did Dave make his way into the world of consumer and fashion from the ground up? Why did Dave never think he was the type of person to be a CEO? What does Dave know now that he wishes he had known when he started his career? 2. From $1.1M Acquisition to $1.4BN Revenues: The Hoka Story: Why did Deckers acquire Hoka for $1.1M? What did they see in this, at the time, futuristic running shoe that no one else saw? Was the growth of Hoka linear or were there needle-moving moments that propelled the brand? What did they do so right that led to their success? What would Dave have done differently in the Hoka journey if he had his time again? 3. From $14.7BN Acquisition to Oprah's Favourite: The UGG Journey: How much of a needle mover was it for UGG when Oprah added it to her list of favourite items? Why did UGG go through a tough period? What did they do wrong? What does it take to resurrect a brand? How can they bring UGG back to life and make it cool? 4. From Abercrombie to LVMH: An Analysis of the Industry: How does Dave analyse the rise and fall of Abercrombie and Hollister? Where did it go wrong? What does Dave believe LVMH are the best in the world at? What does he learn from them? How important is it for consumer companies to have a hero product? How can consumer companies scale to mass markets without losing their core audience?

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  The DDC model is hard to keep sustained because you're spending so much on marketing. Thirty percent of your revenue you're putting back into marketing to fuel the sales. The minute you pull that marketing away to make profit, your sales line drops like a rock. And if you don't have wholesale, if you don't have other sources of revenue, your e-comm site quickly goes from high growth to just dropping like a rock from both top line and bottom line.

• 0:26Harry Stebbings?

  This is 20 VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and I'm so excited for the show today as we feature what must be one of the greatest consumer acquisitions of all time, Hoka. Hoka started by two French entrepreneurs in 2009. Now, check this out, four years later, they sell the company for 1.1 million dollars. But 10 years after that sale, the company is set to report a 1.4 billion in revenue. This is a story unlike any other, and we're joined by Deckers CEO, Dave Powers. Deckers owns five core brands, Hoka and Ugg being two of their main assets. But before we dive into the show today, there is no shortage of helpful AI tools out there. But using them means switching back and forth between yet another digital tool.

• 1:08Harry Stebbings?

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• 1:50Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:32Harry Stebbings?

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• 3:08Speaker 02

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:11Harry Stebbings?

  Dave, I am so excited for this. You don't understand, I normally interview, you know, software founders or venture capitalists. Now I get to interview bluntly, one of the people behind my favourite brands. So thank you so much for joining me today.

• 3:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, thank you, Harry. It's a pleasure to be here and it's even better to know that you're such a fan of Oka.

• 3:28Harry Stebbings?

  Ma'am, my question to you is, we had a little chat and you said that you maybe didn't know what you wanted to do early in your career in terms of it starting at 28. But when you were a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?

• 3:39Speaker 00

  You know, I don't know that I had one thing. I remember early on thinking I wanted to be a race car driver. Like I was really into, you know, race cars as a kid and stuff. But I don't think that was a serious ambition. Looking back on it now, I always did have a creative side to me and I was always building things and creating things. And then when I got into like high school, I started really paying attention to music and fashion. And then I started my own magazine in college around punk music and was really into like what people were wearing. And then that just kind of progressed, but I had no idea that I could build a career out of any of these things. And that didn't happen until my mid twenties to where I realised, hey, I actually can focus on this stuff and make, make a living out of it.

• 4:20Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, it's just a shame TikTok wasn't around. I can see you as an influencer back in the day. I want to zoom forward a little bit because you obviously spend time at Converse and at Timberland. And I think that we're shaped a lot by some of the experiences we have. If you were to take them in isolation, what's the single biggest takeaway from each? And how they impact how you think today, leading decades?

• 4:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a good question. I had just come off 10 years at Gap, which was all about retail and stores. And you know, when I went to Timberland, I think the thing I took away is that the brand at the end of day really is everything. What your brand stands for, who it's going after, what are the things that make it special? You know, and then you need to obsess it every day. So every single decision needs to go through that filter. And the way we looked at the brand at Timberland, you know, and our founder and CEO at the time would say, hey, every product we make is a boot, whether it's a jacket or a backpack. What he meant was everything has to have the same qualities as our original boot that the company was founded on. It's durable, it's quality, high level of protection and from the environment.

• 5:23Speaker 00

  That was a really hard filter for us to make everything, you know, represent the qualities of the boot. And oh, by the way, it's got to be sustainable. But it gave us all a really clear filter as to what we needed to create for a product for the consumer, who we were going after, and then how we would communicate to the consumer. So I look at that brand now and I'm like, man, it's really just so simple. Just go back to what the boot did in the first days of the company and lean on that and really obsess about your consumer. And I think that's the biggest thing I took away from Timberland.

• 5:52Harry Stebbings?

  There's so many things for me to dig into that. I'm going to let you go on Converse and then I'm going to dig into them. Okay, so Converse, what was that?

• 5:59Speaker 00

  Converse was really about tuning into who your consumer is and why they love your brand. When I went to Converse, we were developing the first retail concept. And we spent a lot of time, months and a lot of money, spending time with consumers, understanding what it is they loved about our brand. And once we figured that out, it just unleashed this whole opportunity of. Connection with our consumer was all around the idea of unleashing creativity. Because what we found is that consumers love the brand because it makes them feel creative, for whatever reason. But we just obsessed around the consumer and we created experiences around what those consumers were into. The biggest thing I learned there was really just you have to obsess the consumer and you

• 6:42Speaker 00

  have to bring those experiences to them. You know, on a leadership side, Termland, I learned the power of service and giving back to your employees and community. At Converse, I learned I hate a political environment and it's a very unhealthy way to work in a business.

• 6:58Harry Stebbings?

  How do you prevent political environments from happening?

• 7:00Speaker 00

  You can't flip a switch. And I tell people at Deckers all the time, the reason I'm at Deckers is I'm trying to get away from companies that are political and cutthroat, competitive and siloed. And I just want to come and work at a company that I just feel comfortable being myself at, do my own thing every day, and I want everybody in the company to feel that same way. So, starts at the top, show up in your authentic way and just be yourself, much like, you know, you are on the podcast here, and then allowing others to do it. But you also have to be really critical on who you hire. I kind of consider myself the bouncer of the company. It's a, you know, you can come in and join the club because we think you'll fit in and be additive to our culture and hey, you know, we're not for you.

• 7:40Harry Stebbings?

  How fast are you to remove someone from the club if you don't feel they're a fit?

• 7:44Speaker 00

  It takes, you know, six to 12 months, but usually what happens is kind of organ rejection. It's not me identifying somebody, it's the company and the employees saying, hey, this person is just not able to work the way we work, they're not good to work with, they're not collaborative, we can't trust them. It kind of bubbles up and it's like, all right, so what are you going to do about it? You know, that's kind of how it happens.

• 8:04Harry Stebbings?

  Dave, what have been some of your biggest hiring mistakes? So like, for me, as an example, I've often looked, especially as a young founder, looked at a great logo and gone, they must be brilliant, and actually, they weren't a fit. What are some of your biggest hiring mistakes?

• 8:19Speaker 00

  You get caught up in their experience versus their values. I think that's the biggest thing. And I've hired a few people over my, over the course of my career that I was just influenced by others that really thought they were, you know, the best candidate and I kind of went along with it versus really putting my foot down and saying, hey, I just have... A funny sense about this person, or these are red flags for me. I just need, and I've learned, I gotta be firmer, my convictions and my beliefs about how this person is going to add or detract from our culture separately from, hey, they have the level of experience that we're looking for.

• 8:52Harry Stebbings?

  Can I be honest? I don't like culture. I find that everyone's like, so, oh, we're, you know, all the corporate PR teams that, oh, how we build this inclusive culture and empowering of, you know, I'm like, great. And then I listen to Yves Chinois, who I know you're a fan of the Patagonia brand and everything that's imbued in that. I honestly listen to it and I think, huh? You wanna have a culture where people go surfing when they want to? It's all about happiness? And I sound like Scrooge, but it's also about winning and grind. To what extent are you like, I take Yves Chinois's philosophy, or I don't and I actually go down the more mercenary route?

• 9:30Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great analogy. And I've always looked up to Yvonne in that regard, but we're killing it and we work our butts off and we are determined to win. We are here to win and we are an ambitious and competitive group of people, but it's just about how we do it. We do it as a team, more like a healthy professional sports team than a team of people that are just focused on delivering. At the end of the day, the goal here is let people just be themselves and work how they wanna work and how they work best. Don't try to make them fit into a mold that is unnatural because that's where they start worrying more about what you think about them than doing a good job.

• 10:05Harry Stebbings?

  What do you mean they're worrying more about what you think about them? Sorry.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  You know, in my career, early in the days at Gap, it was mostly like, hey, we're a certain mold, you have to dress a certain way. If you're gonna get ahead, you know, you have to have these perfect presentations. And if there was any bad comments from somebody in the company, you heard about it immediately and so and so didn't like this when you did that. It's just like, you were always walking on eggshells and you were so nervous about being judged that you couldn't focus on your job. That's what I talk about when I'm just saying, hey, just come be yourself. But do hard work.

• 10:38Harry Stebbings?

  Are you a harsh critic on yourself? When you say about being judged, I always, we chatted before this.

• 10:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:43Harry Stebbings?

  And people judge me, sure, I don't blame them, I'm a knob most of the time. But I judge myself more than anything else.

• 10:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, I do judge myself. It's not something I think about that often, but I do have high standards for myself of integrity and how I show up for others. Yeah, I would say yes.

• 11:00Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Speaker 00

  And I don't like to lose either.

• 11:02Harry Stebbings?

  We mentioned, obviously, kind of you're killing it. What has caused this huge surge in the Hoka brand?

• 11:08Speaker 00

  It's been a fascinating journey to watch. When I came into the company, we didn't own Hoka yet, so we had just bought it a year after I got here. And, you know, it was odd decision to a lot of people in the company, like, what are we going to do with this shoe?

• 11:21Harry Stebbings?

  Can you take me to that, actually? That's too interesting, because you bought it and it was like tiny, it was a small acquisition. I can't remember what it was, like two, three million.

• 11:27Speaker 00

  It was a couple of million dollars. And the reason was our CEO at the time, Unhel, he was a former runner and felt like we needed an athletic brand in our portfolio, which is true. But when he showed up with that and we saw this crazy looking moon boot, we were all like, is this the performance brand we're talking about? But I give, you know, the teams a lot of credit in the early days. They were able to put that on people's feet that could really put it to the test. And those are hardcore ultra runners. And feedback that came back was amazing. And it was like, I don't know what's in this thing, it's ugly as hell, but man, it really performs. And so we knew we had something there that we could build off. Because great brands are meaningful and important to their consumer. You want to build a brand that your consumers can't live without.

• 12:11Speaker 00

  And so when we started really digging into the technology and evolving the design, we were able to get more shoes on more core hardcore athletes' feet. And that's how it all really kind of started. It was word of mouth within a very small niche industry. This is the greatest innovation in our lifetime in running. And we became really important to the run specialty channel and we kind of built it from there.

• 12:34Harry Stebbings?

  Was the growth continuous or were there moments like I think with UG there was with Oprah, where it was kind of much more step function, like where it suddenly increased? How was that growth curve?

• 12:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, there was high growth, but really small numbers at the beginning. And this is where a lot of companies, I think, you know, and I've learned from my mistakes here is you start chasing a number versus healthy, sustainable growth. And so we actually went through a period early on where we had a lot of markdown inventory in the channel, we were selling off price to people and it was because we were trying to chase a growth number. Fortunately, we recognized that early on and we pulled back inventory. You know, we closed accounts that we didn't want to be in.

• 13:15Harry Stebbings?

  Why is it bad to chase a growth number? If we think about Hoka, I could argue that actually you're getting it on more feet, more people see the value of it and they sell more friends and then you get more word of mouth. Why is growth bad?

• 13:27Speaker 00

  I mean, that's the tricky part because you want to do that, right? You want to grow faster, you want to use word of mouth, you want to use distribution. But if you overdo it too soon, you could end up with extra inventory in the channel that you have to mark down and then it becomes this brand that used to be versus a brand that could be.

• 13:46Harry Stebbings?

  So you have to manage supply on a per-channel basis to make sure you don't have an imbalance of supply and demand and then lead to price reductions.

• 13:54Speaker 00

  Absolutely.

• 13:55Harry Stebbings?

  How do you do channel forecasting on a supply-side basis?

• 14:00Speaker 00

  You know, you really got to sweat the details on that. You have to look at every door you're going to be in, how much inventory you want them to have, estimated rates of sell-through and then, you know, where you want to place big bets on additional inventory or, you know, stay tight. We always buy a little more for upside, hoping that we can get some at-once upside business. But it's a delicate skill that you have to have to be able to manage the demand and supply in a healthy way.

• 14:24Harry Stebbings?

  Is there a case of being careful not to try and push channels where your margin is higher? Obviously, when you're in like wholesale, your margin is going to be lower than when you're doing D to C through the Hoka website. Is there a challenge of like you skewing where you prefer to go because of the margin? And how do you think about that?

• 14:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great question. You know, our DDC channel is our most profitable channel, right? Margin and profit. And so ideally, we want as much of our business to go through that channel as we can, because that's best for the bottom line. But you know, you're only going to get so much reach and you have to spend a lot more marketing dollars to drive that. We have tremendous relationships with our wholesale partners and we spend our time working with the ones that we think represent the brand really well. And we say no to more accounts than we say yes to. We're really selective, but we need wholesale. We need it. They need us. It creates awareness, allows people to try a product on in real life. And I think a lot of the consumers ultimately come to our DDC channel where we can cultivate that lifetime value as well.

• 15:29Harry Stebbings?

  In terms of like working with retailers and wholesalers, what's the biggest challenge? Is it like brand maintenance, given the fact you don't own that experience? What are your biggest lessons in terms of challenges in working with those retailers and wholesalers?

• 15:43Speaker 00

  Finding partners that can represent and showcase the brand in a way that we feel is right for the brand. You know, if you went into a multi-brand environment and you saw Hoka sitting on a shelf with no signage and just a bunch of shoes next to, you know, a bunch of other brands, that's not good enough for us. If you want our brand, we want to make sure that you're presenting it with storytelling, the right signage, the right fixturing. And, you know, we got in a lot of trouble back in the days with UGG because we just sold our basic product to everybody and just let them do what they wanted with it. And that worked for a while, but then it really hurt the brand. And so for Hoka, we don't want it to just have it sitting on a shelf with no level of service or storytelling to go with it.

• 16:22Harry Stebbings?

  I spoke to Maha Ibrahim before, and she actually told me that I should ask about Asian expansion. How does Asian expansion factor into the growth story? And how do you think about it, given so many others have struggled?

• 16:34Speaker 00

  You know, early on, we developed what we called a playbook for Hoka to go to market with. And it really was be meaningful and important to the best athletes in those sports in your market. So, early days in Japan, we focused on being on shoes worn at marathons and trail races and cultivating those athletes and working only with the run specialty channel. We couldn't find our product anywhere else. That was our success in the US, is really kill it in the run specialty channel and the core outdoor channel, and then you can move out beyond that.

• 17:07Harry Stebbings?

  So what is on our playbook's replicable across countries? You know, running communities are different, I'm sure. The way that people run in terms of time of day, their relationship to running is different. Are playbooks replicable across country?

• 17:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, because each brand has its own personality. But the playbook I'm talking about is really around distribution and how you build brand love and then roll it out to more points of access.

• 17:30Harry Stebbings?

  How do you do that, Dave?

• 17:32Speaker 00

  You got to start with the core runners and the run specialty channels. You know, if you are an athlete or you're a runner and you go into a running store. A brand's best hope is that the salesperson on the floor pulls your shoe out of the back room and says to the consumer, you need to try this on. That's where it all came down to for us is the salespeople started recommending Hoka to people because of the way it performed. And then it builds from there. But if you have to win market share in that channel and be important in that channel before you can expand out.

• 18:04Harry Stebbings?

  I'm going to go there. Fuck it, why not? I had David Allerman on the show from On Running. And he spoke about his co-founder being an athlete and then really seeding the kind of pro and very hardcore athlete community. Thought about it when you said about kind of the winner of the ultra wearing HOKAs. How do you think about that? Because you both seem to take that very, we're here for the pros, we're worn by pros. How do you assess that landscape today? And is it only On and you going for the pro down? How do you feel about that?

• 18:35Speaker 00

  No, I mean, that's not unique to Hoka On. I mean, every, you know, performance brand aspires to that same thing, right? And you can either do it by signing up top athletes or you can also do it by being important to every athlete. So I think the formula there is, hey, yes, we want to be at the podium. We want to be on the best athletes in the world. But I think one of the most inspiring things I've ever seen is from 11 to midnight at the Ironman Championships where the last finishers are coming in. Some of them have disabilities, some of them are 70 plus and older, and most of those people are wearing Hoka. And that's the difference. Yes, the top 10 people, maybe you'll get one person wearing Hoka. But when you see the everyday athlete choosing Hoka, that's where the magic is.

• 19:20Harry Stebbings?

  I mentioned Maha earlier. I spoke to her and she said, you know, it's a really interesting landscape because most of the store brands are actually struggling intensely. And then you have newer entrants, On and Hoka, who are crushing. Where do you see the footwear sneaker industry going in the next five years was her question.

• 19:36Speaker 00

  Well, I think we're in a really, really exciting time for performance footwear in general. You know, when Hoka came onto the scene roughly 10 years ago, barefoot running was a massive trend. Everybody was running in shoes that actually weren't good for them.

• 19:50Harry Stebbings?

  What a load of shit that was. I saw these like Vibrams and I was like, my toes are separated. Son of a-

• 19:57Speaker 00

  Totally. You know, Nike went there with the Nike Free and started making this, you know, lower profile product and everybody just followed suit. So next thing you know, you have a whole industry of running brands that are creating product for people that that's actually is not good for them from an injury standpoint, performance standpoint. So my point is, I think now with the availability of different compounds and carbon plates and all different ways of geometry and shoe making, the sky's the limit on what you can do now with performance footwear. We're going into a new era of innovation and technology that we've never seen before. And a lot of the Chinese brands, you know, running brands like Anta, Li Ning, 361, they're creating incredible product. So I think you're going

• 20:39Speaker 00

  to start seeing really next level super sneakers. I mean, look at the one Adidas just launched. It's meant to be worn once, one marathon, and then it's no good, right? But people are breaking records in it. So it's, we're pushing the boundaries of what performance can be and how footwear can help. And I think it's going to continue for next five to 10 years.

• 20:57Harry Stebbings?

  How loyal are consumers? I had the founder of Allbirds on the show, Joey Willinger, and I said this to him, and he said, well, you know, the average US consumer has eight pairs of shoes, or eight pairs that they buy every year. I said, well, that's a lot. My mother has about 30, so you know, her money is shrinking. How loyal is the average consumer to running shoes?

• 21:15Speaker 00

  Well, traditionally, they're very loyal. And it's hard to get a consumer that was running in Asics for 10 years or Saucony for 10 years to switch brands. But that's changing dramatically. I think people are open to trying different brands now. And obviously, you know, with Hoka and ON disrupting the industry, so to speak, you have a lot more people venturing on and trying them out just because they're hearing about it. But what we're finding is our fans of Hoka are diehard lifelong fans. I mean, every time I travel and I'm wearing Hoka, I hear stories from people, I have 10 pairs in my closet, you know, I can't wait for the next one to come out. I always liken this brand to Patagonia. I always just was obsessed with Patagonia and wanted more their product and their brand. I think people feel that way about Hoka.

• 21:59Harry Stebbings?

  Final one, and then we will discuss UG, which I want to, but is it like, I don't know how to ask this kind of. You need to beat ON. It's a competition.

• 22:07Speaker 00

  Sure.

• 22:08Harry Stebbings?

  Do you feel that? And if so, what do you need to do to beat them?

• 22:11Speaker 00

  I mean, we don't wake up every day thinking how we're going to beat ON, what is ON doing? You know, I have a lot of respect for the team there, what they've done to create that brand. It's fun to watch, honestly, as a competitor, but we're fighting for the same shelf space, market share, consumer. So naturally, we're competitors, so to speak. But I think we both come at it with different approaches, different technologies, and we just got to stay true to ourselves. Honestly, between the two of us, our market shares are still relatively small globally. There's so, so much potential for both brands to do incredibly well. Do we talk about beating them and performing better than them and staying ahead of them? Sure. We do that with every brand we compete with, but I think there's just tremendous opportunity for new, fresh brands like ON and HOKA to take massive market share.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  And, you know, if you look at where Under Armour used to be, Adidas used to be really important in running Nike. I mean, these are massive businesses that if you take 10% share, that's billions of dollars.

• 23:05Harry Stebbings?

  So I actually, you know, before this kind of tweeted about the two best consumer acquisitions in history, yours two being up there. You've got HOKA, that was more recently.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 23:16Harry Stebbings?

  And then I think it was 1995, you paid about $14.6 million, to be precise.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  Yeah, both.

• 23:24Harry Stebbings?

  I don't think you were there at the time, but you paid like $14.6 million for UG.

• 23:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:29Harry Stebbings?

  UG boots, most kind of famously known for. What did Deckers get so right with UG that's turned it into the transformational brand that it's been?

• 23:37Speaker 00

  That's a really interesting story, but it came down to originally UG, when Deckers bought it, was a brand for surfers, right? It was a boot that, you know, surfers in Australia, Southern California would wear after surfing. It was a functional item. That's how it was being sold as a boot for surfers and just that kind of lifestyle. It's legit. I mean, people still wear it that way and, you know, and I've done the same and.

• 24:00Harry Stebbings?

  Do all great brands start niche? When we look at HOKA, it's for ultras and for supreme runners. When we look at UG, it's for surfers.

• 24:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:08Harry Stebbings?

  When we look at like, you know, a lot of like, I mean, Oakley sunglasses.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:11Harry Stebbings?

  Hardcore cricketers and cyclists.

• 24:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 24:14Harry Stebbings?

  Are great brands built in niches?

• 24:17Speaker 00

  I think so. I think they're a niche consumer need that hasn't been met yet, or they're solving for a problem that is meaningful to consumers. I think that's where all great brands start. I mean, if you look at Teva, when we bought Teva, that was the first sports sandal because river guides in the Grand Canyon were frustrated with their flip flops falling off their feet. So they invented straps to put on the sandal, and that was Teva. And that was for a very, very specific consumer at the time, but you know, look at it now. It's on runways. We just did a collab with Chloe. So if you look at all the other brands, Birkenstock, Crocs, most of them start with a real niche, but something that's super important for that consumer.

• 24:55Harry Stebbings?

  So what did you do right with Ugg? It started off as like a surfer brand.

• 24:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think the team, probably in the early 2000s, made the pivot to positioning it as a kind of fashion staple and a cold weather staple. And that's where the team started selling to Nordstroms and some fashion accounts. You started seeing it showing up on celebrities in Southern California. And then the real turning point was when Oprah put it on her list of favorite things for that year. But that was when it really made the switch from a functional boot for surfers to a fashion icon. And that just opened up a whole nother world of opportunity and total market TAM.

• 25:33Harry Stebbings?

  I often think people overthink how much of a role being in the newspapers will have or being in press will have. And actually, they're in vogue and like, it doesn't actually make that much of a difference. When you have like Oprah put it in her list, do you just see that up and to the right for a continuous amount of time?

• 25:50Speaker 00

  At that time, yes. I mean, they were chasing business. It was a freight strain and they were just trying to keep up for a good five years.

• 25:56Harry Stebbings?

  It's a really interesting comparison to Hoka. We offer great runners and we stay there and we solve their problem. Ugg is not that, but as you said, there was a positional reshift in terms of focus and the messaging to surfers didn't continue. How do you think about that when you compare the two?

• 26:14Speaker 00

  To me, it's very polarizing from an aesthetic standpoint and a fashion standpoint. But I've met very few people, if any, that have said they put it on and were disappointed. And at the end of the day, it comes down to how they feel and how they make you feel emotionally. That's what we've found in this, in our consumers is they love how it feels on their foot, but it also is, and this is going to sound corny, but it's like a warm hug or it's like their cozy blanket when they put it on. And so we've been able to tap into those two insights to build what we are now, a $2 billion plus brand.

• 26:48Harry Stebbings?

  We mentioned kind of about maintenance of brands. It feels like, I'm in London, but like, it feels like in London, I don't know whatever that time period that was, 10 years ago, peak. And then it went through like a bunny deceleration period in terms of growth of Arg.

• 27:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:01Harry Stebbings?

  It wasn't as cool as it was.

• 27:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:04Harry Stebbings?

  Where did it go off track there?

• 27:06Speaker 00

  Over distribution. You know, we were selling basically the same items, so the classic tall boot to every account that asked. And so when you walked down High Street and you looked in the windows, everybody had the same product and there was no differentiation. And, you know, then it also kind of became a chav boot, right? It was seen as lower market because everybody had it. It was off price. You could get it anywhere. And we lost the specialness of the brand. And it took us five years in the UK and Europe to get that back.

• 27:36Harry Stebbings?

  How do you not lose the specialness of the brand, but increase adoption, increase usage? Cause you're not going to do a Chanel or a Patek Philippe and limit supply.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:46Harry Stebbings?

  Significantly. So how do you do that without making it cheap, bunnly?

• 27:51Speaker 00

  What we ended up doing, and this is in the US and in Europe, is pulling back and making it almost kind of disappear in the eyes of the consumer for a while. It was just an average boot at that time. It was everywhere. It was nothing special. People were then making fun of it about, you know, basic bitch, right? And like, you know, pumpkin spice lattes and chav consumers. And it was like, people made fun of it. So we had to pull it all back, retrench, and then selectively start going back out to the right consumers, make sure the presentation was right, working with the right influences to reposition it in a new way.

• 28:24Harry Stebbings?

  How do you pull back? Cause you're consciously then saying, we're going to have reduced revenues, reduced profits.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:30Harry Stebbings?

  And you have to be okay with that?

• 28:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, the goal was profit. So when we went through our journey back in 2016, when I came into the role, we told the street, we're going to pull back on revenue growth, but we're going to improve our profit profile. That gave us the air cover to do what we needed to do to be able to pull back distribution and tighten up our sales.

• 28:50Harry Stebbings?

  How do you keep a team excited when you're pulling back in that way?

• 28:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's tough. We really have to give them something to believe in. We had a lot of turnover at that time, which I think probably the right thing to do, definitely the right thing to do. We needed fresh perspective on the brand. That creates new energy. It gives people a reason to believe, gives them purpose. And we're all in the fight together, but it's not easy. I'll tell you.

• 29:13Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, I'm sure it's not easy. On the re-acceleration, talk to me about how one approaches that. If we start on product, is it keep same product? Is it innovate? Is it more SKUs, less SKUs?

• 29:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's funny. We brought in a new president around 16, 17 for the brand. My remit to that person was just disrupt this brand. You need to change people's perceptions of the brand, get people to notice UGG in a new, different way. Andrea, who was the president at the time, really ran with it, pushed the fashion envelope of it, pushed creativity, brought in a lot of color, materials, different influences we partnered with. And next thing you know, it was like, oh, there's something happening at UGG. And then we started introducing iterations of the classics, new product that still had some of the DNA of the original brand. It just started changing people's perception. And at that time, we were cleaning up the marketplace to be able to go back out with the right people and the right locations with the right inventory.

• 30:09Speaker 00

  And now it's all about focus. We're reducing SKUs. We're innovating off the classic in really exciting ways. We're leveraging some of the best influencers in the world.

• 30:21Harry Stebbings?

  Is the re-acceleration complete? Are we re-accelerating or are we still plateau slash?

• 30:26Speaker 00

  There's so much excitement about the brand, one, but then we have so many bestselling styles now that allow us to reach different consumers, different wearing occasions. So people are buying, traditionally they would buy one boot every two and a half years, the classic boot. And now we have people buying two or three times a year because they're buying different products. So it's definitely on the upswing and in the men's is a massive opportunity for us too.

• 30:50Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, what are your lessons on the importance of a hero product? When you look at Hoka, UGG, the other brands you have, how much of a role do hero products play continuously?

• 31:01Speaker 00

  I mean, they're massive. I've had the fortune of working at companies that were founded on a hero product. The yellow boot at Timberland, the Chuck Taylor at Converse. They just allow you to do so many things because of the scale, the volume, the margin, the consistency of the business. If you don't have that, it's really hard to run a successful, sustainable business. As long as you continue to stay true to what those products did in the first place and why consumers love them, and you iterate off of those, you should have a good run. But you cannot underestimate how important those iconic styles are to the overall business. And I've said to our team recently, you know, we have multi-brands at Deckers, right? Five brands all over the world. If you look at some of the Hoka styles and the Ugg styles.

• 31:45Harry Stebbings?

  What's the top style, like number one driver of revenue?

• 31:47Speaker 00

  I don't know off the top of my head, or I want to share that information. But, you know, the fact is that these styles are just super, super important, and you have to treat them with the care and respect that they deserve, because otherwise you'll see, you know, you'll go where Ugg went 2013 and 14, and it's not a good place to be as a brand. I think you're seeing a lot of brands out there today struggling because of that.

• 32:09Harry Stebbings?

  When you look at kind of those iconic styles, they allow you to charge premium prices. If people want Converse's, not a rip-off of Converse's by another brand, and so you can put another, whatever percent that is, on top. I read a lot, especially about Bernard Arnault, and they say about your relationship to fashion, and particularly high fashion, is irrational. And he responded, "It's entirely rational. Luxury is the only place you can get luxury margins." Which I thought was brilliant. My question to you is, how do you think about getting luxury margins? And is that only available once iconic brands are built and hero products are made?

• 32:48Speaker 00

  Well, I get it. You know, they've done an incredible job maintaining, well, first of all, demanding obscene margins, right? Based on what, I know what those products cost and what they're getting for them. They're geniuses of building, you know, aspirational love for their consumers. Listen, if you can pull it off and you can sustain it, you've got an incredible business going. But the key is to create product that has that level of positioning and aspiration, and then maintain it.

• 33:15Harry Stebbings?

  When we say about like maintain it, in the UK in particular, there was huge, huge love for Abercrombie and Hollister about 10 years ago. And then just absolute obliteration of both brands. You think intensely about brand, Dave. Is there anything that you think or take away from the brand build and brand destruction there?

• 33:35Speaker 00

  It's interesting. Luxury in a way has its own built in defense mechanism where there's a certain

• 33:36Speaker 00

  I think.

• 33:41Speaker 00

  type of consumer that can afford that product. And they're the ones that are wearing it around town and it's where you're seeing it. So it kind of stays up in that stratosphere because a lot of people, it's unattainable from a price point. But when you look at an Abercrombie or American Eagle, even Gap, you know, when I was there. I remember I had a conversation at the Gap one time over our logo Gap sweatshirt. And the CEO, Mickey at the time, was pissed off because he was like, I see that on reality shows and talk shows and people in the audience. He's like, it's starting to show up everywhere and on consumers that aren't good for the brand, so to speak, right? And so I think when you start looking at Abercrombie and American Eagle and even Gap at that time, it was the hot new thing until it wasn't.

• 34:23Speaker 00

  And when it wasn't, it's because it was showing up on everybody all over the place. It became ubiquitous. There was nothing special about it anymore. You started to see it on discount in the stores and you could tell it was a brand that was slowing down and dying versus on the upswing.

• 34:38Harry Stebbings?

  How fast is brand decline, do you think?

• 34:41Speaker 00

  It's quick, yeah. It catches you off guard. And the worst thing is you have all the inventory planned for growth and all of a sudden it slows down and that's when you're in real trouble because you gotta clear all that inventory and it just makes it worse.

• 34:52Harry Stebbings?

  But then there's also brand immortality, I think, which is like, you know, Balenciaga, I'm sure you know the brand.

• 34:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:59Harry Stebbings?

  When it went through recently in the last year, I can't remember whenever it was.

• 35:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:03Harry Stebbings?

  Just brand destruction with some of their campaigns. Balenciaga, selling more than ever now.

• 35:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:09Harry Stebbings?

  Brand immortality. At what stage does a brand become too big to fail almost?

• 35:15Speaker 00

  I think it's really the legacy brands, you know, newer brands, they don't have that longevity or the history, the archives that a lot of these luxury brands do and they can reach back to their history as a way to go forward. If you're a young brand and you don't have that, you run the risk of just being a flash in the pan. But Balenciaga has such a history and they also have just a baseline of consumers. They'll ebb and flow and they'll grow and, you know, contract a little bit, but you're not going to walk into a Balenciaga and see a Black Friday fire sale, ever.

• 35:47Speaker 00

  I hope.

• 35:48Harry Stebbings?

  No, I mean, I would love it in Chanel. It might make my Christmas shopping a little bit cheaper, but not Arno. Fuck you.

• 35:55Speaker 00

  They protect it, you know?

• 35:56Harry Stebbings?

  Unbelievable. We discussed Hoka, we discussed Ugg.

• 35:59Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:00Harry Stebbings?

  Two incredible acquisitions. And you mentioned five brands portfolio. Why aren't you acquiring more, Dave?

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, we get asked that question a lot and we talk about it a lot internally. The best answer is we don't need to. You know, we have such organic growth with Ugg still, with Hoka, that we feel we have a path where we could add billions on to our revenue today over the next five years organically, which is the best way to grow a business because it's built in, the margins are there, it's not disruptive to the company, it's predictable. And the return on, you know, investment is massive versus overpaying for an acquisition that you're in the hole financially from day one and you're spending the next five, 10 years getting out of it before it pays off.

• 36:44Harry Stebbings?

  Just pushing your strategic thinking here. Why not cut two others? You mentioned Hoka, you mentioned Ugg.

• 36:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:50Harry Stebbings?

  Got Tava. The two others, I'm sure probably account for minimal revenue in the grand scheme now compared to the others.

• 36:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:56Harry Stebbings?

  Why not cut them and just focus?

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, we just announced that we're going to, you look for a buyer for one of our brands, Sunook. And so we're really placing a bet on Teva. You know, when we look at acquisitions, we've looked at, you know, a lot of smaller outdoor brands out there because we feel that's a category and a space that has opportunity. And honestly, when we looked at Teva and compared to all these brands that we could have potentially purchased, Teva has the best global awareness, it has the best margins, it's an iconic heritage brand. So we just, we're treating that as an internal acquisition. It's a good question, you know, we don't need the smaller brands to be successful. I like them because they have potential, we learn from them, they're great development opportunities for employees.

• 37:38Speaker 00

  We can test a lot on these brands without making big mistakes and you never know. You know, some of these smaller brands could end up being massive, just like Ugg and Hoka.

• 37:47Harry Stebbings?

  Why didn't you buy Strava? If you think about the world that you do not currently own, it's the technology world, it's the online world. We power your feet, now we power your community.

• 37:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, you know, I had conversations with the founders there a couple of times, not in that context, but just getting to know them and, you know, our brands partnering. And for them, they had really, I don't think they had any ambitions of being acquired and wanted to go down their path because they saw, you know, a real great opportunity. And we figured it's better to partner with them versus acquire them. We're not a technology company. You know, you've seen folks like Under Armour and Lululemon acquire technologies. It's hard to do and keep it going and do it right. And I think we're better off just partnering with brands like that versus making major acquisitions.

• 38:28Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, when you look at two such high-growth brands in the portfolio, how do you trade off resources between each of them, given both of them probably being quite starved of resources just because they're growing so fast? How do you manage that trade off?

• 38:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's one of the things that we have done, I think, really well over the past six or seven years, is focus our allocations and resources against those two brands. You know, when I came into the CEO role in 2016, we were a company that kind of spread a little bit to everybody. So we had seven or eight brands. Hey, everybody, here's what you need. Each region, here's money, each channel. And what we've been able to do over the last five years is really focus our resources. You know, the good news is we have very healthy profit margins. You know, we're in 18% operating profit.

• 39:15Harry Stebbings?

  You don't need to tell me, but I'm just intrigued as like a software investor. What is like healthy margins in shoes and in fashion?

• 39:22Speaker 00

  In the industry, in operating profit? Above 10% is healthy, probably average 10 to 12. And, you know, so you have folks out there like Crocs, which is, you know, high 20s. But aside from that, Decker's at 18 plus percent is one of the top performers in that place.

• 39:38Harry Stebbings?

  So Decker's, that's 18 blended. Can I ask, which is the most high-margin brand?

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Initial margin is okay, but Ugg is a close second. I mean, they're both very, very healthy in the industry.

• 39:48Harry Stebbings?

  Are you seeing margin improvement over time? Or is there like margin maintenance and stability?

• 39:53Speaker 00

  On occasions, you know, with air freight changes and material changes. But you know, the real shift at a company level for us is full price sell through in DDC. That's where we get our highest margins.

• 40:03Harry Stebbings?

  Full price sell through, meaning you don't have a discount?

• 40:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, minimal discounts. So initial margin, it's really about cost of materials, you know, retail price, transportation, logistics, et cetera. But net margin, ideally, you want as few markdowns as possible. You want to sell through your profitable channel.

• 40:19Harry Stebbings?

  Why are all D to C companies getting hammered, Dave? I, you know, I had, I mentioned Joey at Allbirds.

• 40:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:25Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, but why is all D to C pretty much getting hammered?

• 40:29Speaker 00

  We've looked at a lot of them. When that was really a happening sector, you know, we got caught up in it too. Like, hey, we need a DDC brand. How can we learn from them, et cetera? But what you find out after a while is the DDC model is hard to keep sustained because you're spending so much on marketing. 25%, 30% of your revenue, you're putting back into marketing to fuel the sales. The minute you pull that marketing away to make profit, your sales line drops like a rock. And if you don't have wholesale, if you don't have other sources of revenue, your e-comm site quickly goes from high growth, decent profit, low single digits if you're lucky, a lot of times negative, to just dropping like a rock from both top line and bottom line.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  And so I think what people didn't appreciate at first is if you take away that marketing spend, will the brand still stay on a positive growth trajectory? What a lot of companies are finding now is that that's not the case when you pull away that marketing. So I think it's a flaw in the model unless you just have a brand that also is in wholesale, has the margin structure to be successful at wholesale and is important enough on its own to sustain the growth versus just digital marketing spend.

• 41:40Harry Stebbings?

  I'm always like, when you say about sustaining growth, I'm like, well, you have word of mouth, you have people using wine and exposing them in public, you have repeat usage in a lot of these cases.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 41:49Harry Stebbings?

  So I don't really think that's a good answer, if I'm honest. Maybe the product's just not that good.

• 41:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe that's the case. That's the separation between good and great. Great product, great brand, meaningful to consumers will outlast the marketing spend. If your brand and your product is interesting for a moment because you saw it on Instagram feed and you clicked through and you bought it and then you kind of forget about it or you weren't as excited when you got it at home, then it's not going to last on its own.

• 42:18Harry Stebbings?

  Do you agree that the best CEOs are the best resource allocators? We mentioned Bernard Arnault earlier, we mentioned luxury and margin. Do you believe the best CEOs are the best resource allocators?

• 42:27Speaker 00

  It's definitely a component of it. I don't think that's it. You can't just be good at the financial side of the business. You still have to motivate your teams. You have to make sure the product engine and the innovation engine, all those things.

• 42:38Harry Stebbings?

  What's been the best resource allocation decision you've made since being CEO? And what did you learn from it?

• 42:44Speaker 00

  I think the best decision we made was reallocating money from smaller brands, smaller businesses. You know, if you think about the complexity of our business globally, seven or eight brands, global, three channels, everybody needs a little bit of money to be successful. Myself and the finance leaders at the time did in 16 and 17 would say, actually, no, you don't all need that money. These two things need that money and we're going to reset. That was the biggest reallocation success that we had. And then you've just got to put financial guardrails around it going forward.

• 43:16Harry Stebbings?

  How do you do that?

• 43:17Speaker 00

  Tactically, you do it in a budgeting process and say, hey, here, your goal is 15% operating profit for your brand. If you grow 3%, that's great because we're taking the resources, we're putting them against the biggest opportunities. We've just got to hold people accountable to their targets.

• 43:32Harry Stebbings?

  There's always a flip side, my friend. What's the worst resource allocation decision you've made? What did you learn from that?

• 43:38Speaker 00

  For a time, we were starting to build a massive infrastructure in Asia. We had an office in Hong Kong and we were building out teams and we, at the team there, you know, they wanted to build a Deckers website and start selling online to all different countries and hired too many people. And it was like, they had a vision for it and we kind of went with it for a while, or I did. And then finally I was like, this is not a game worth playing. We've got to cut our losses here. And so we ended up pretty much closing that office. We still have a small office there of a team that are managing the region, but that was just getting out of control. And that's what can happen when you've got a big company and you're not disciplined on spend. Everybody can present a good reason why they need the funds, but at the end of the day, you've got to be super clear on where you're going to get the biggest payback.

• 44:18Harry Stebbings?

  What's the hardest thing about your job today? Is that it?

• 44:21Speaker 00

  The hardest thing about my job today? It's honestly not the business. I always say the business is the easy part. It's the people that is what keeps me up at night. You know, business is black and white. You're making decisions on the fly. That's best at interest of the of the business and the financials. But keeping and attracting talent is my biggest concern right now.

• 44:40Harry Stebbings?

  How do you think about your personal relationship to money today? I used to think it was everything, if I'm honest. I grew up without money and then I got a bit of money and realized that I was just as lonely and

• 44:53Harry Stebbings?

  insecure and it's really nice.

• 44:56Speaker 00

  You're still growing up. You're still young.

• 44:58Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah.

• 44:59Speaker 00

  Same for me. I grew up without a lot of money and, you know, a small town. And, you know, obviously now I've been successful and it frankly blows my mind that my life has ended up where it is. A CEO of a company and, you know, financially successful. I mean, I never would have imagined any of these things happening.

• 45:13Harry Stebbings?

  Why?

• 45:14Speaker 00

  I just never thought I would be one of those people. It's not how I thought about myself. Being a CEO of a company was not my aspiration growing up.

• 45:22Harry Stebbings?

  Can I be so rude, so rude?

• 45:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:25Harry Stebbings?

  Would you blame your parents for that? And the reason I say that is just because like I would want my children to know they can do anything.

• 45:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:32Harry Stebbings?

  That president role they can get.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:35Harry Stebbings?

  Is that their fault?

• 45:37Speaker 00

  You know, we were just talking about this the other day with some friends. I grew up in New England, very kind of old school, conservative, set in its ways. You know, I'm one of the only or few people in my extended family that have left New England, pursued something beyond what was available to me there. And so I think that there is a mentality in my parents that was like, you can't do that. That's crazy. I wouldn't blame them for it, but I think that the small thinking was part of my family culture for sure, my parents.

• 46:04Harry Stebbings?

  What do you tell your kids today to avoid small thinking?

• 46:07Speaker 00

  I try to model opportunities for them. You know, I talk a lot about my job and the work and the travel. And and I try to give them experiences globally that will open their eyes to possibilities. But it's up to them. I want my kids to be good humans, to be happy with themselves. And I don't care if that's being a woodworker, a fishing guide or a CEO. It doesn't matter to me what they do. I just want them to be comfortable in their own path and be good humans.

• 46:33Harry Stebbings?

  Oh, no, I want mine to found Decicorns. I'm much more precise than you are. A final question that I do have to ask, I love this one. If you could cool yourself up the night before your wife had your first child 23 years ago, I guess.

• 46:46Speaker 00

  Oh, man.

• 46:47Harry Stebbings?

  What would you tell yourself, knowing all that you know now?

• 46:52Harry Stebbings?

  Don't do it, don't do it.

• 46:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, definitely do it and be more in tune to it. Really, really tune in to your kids. You know, it's hard when you have your own life and your own career and that comes first, which, you know, for my generation it did. It's hard to also give that same level of energy and attention to a young baby or your kids growing up. I found that to be the challenge. That's changed over time for me, but that would have been my advice.

• 47:19Harry Stebbings?

  Can you still be as efficient and as killer with kids as you are without them? Like, I don't have kids today. Everything I do, I do it to win. And you can't do that when you're a parent.

• 47:30Speaker 00

  No, I think you have to make some sacrifices. But it all depends on what's important to you at the end of the day.

• 47:35Harry Stebbings?

  Did you have a moment when you were like, actually, I'd rather take a slight hit there in order to have kids? Like, was that a conscious realization?

• 47:43Speaker 00

  Every parent has that. God, I wish I could spend more time with my kids or be there more for my kids, you know, that are in the workforce and working. Unfortunately, not everybody acts on it or does the work to kind of balance it out or has the opportunity to balance it out because grinding it out just to make sure your family's taken care of. Every parent wishes they could spend more time with their kids, yeah.

• 48:04Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, we're gonna do a quick fire, Dave. I say a short statement, you give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

• 48:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, cool, let's go.

• 48:09Harry Stebbings?

  What do others not know that you know to be true?

• 48:12Speaker 00

  Well, I think for me, it's, I'm an introvert. I don't think a lot of people realize that.

• 48:15Harry Stebbings?

  You can be CEO of any other company for a day. What would it be and why?

• 48:19Speaker 00

  I would love to go back to the Gap. It's such a shame to see how bad that business has become.

• 48:25Harry Stebbings?

  Is it still growing?

• 48:27Speaker 00

  It's still going. I don't think it's still growing. I mean, it's still, it's struggling. So I would love to go back there for a day to say, hey, what is actually going on here? And then if you had carte blanche decisions that you could make, what would you do to, to get it on the right path?

• 48:40Harry Stebbings?

  What is the right way to view competition?

• 48:42Speaker 00

  This is the harsh word, but your enemy and your friend. If you're smart, you will learn from your competition as much as you try to take them down. If they're truly competitive, they're doing something right.

• 48:52Harry Stebbings?

  Who's your biggest competitor, Dave? I find it helpful to align a team around one and name them. Is it Nike? Is it Adidas? Is it On?

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Well, for Hoka, it's, you know, it's Nike. That's the one that really drives us internally is, hey, we think that we could take a chunk of their business. You know, we have a few ex-Nike employees here. I was at ex-Nike. I am an ex-Nike employee.

• 49:15Harry Stebbings?

  Nothing like loyalty, hey, Dave?

• 49:18Harry Stebbings?

  Tell me, you can have dinner with anyone, dead or alive. Who would it be and why?

• 49:22Speaker 00

  I would say either Bono or Dave Grohl. Bono, I just think he is just fascinating, the way that he has transformed himself from a punk kid, garage band in Dublin, to this global, international character that is beyond the music. What he's been able to do on the global stage for AIDS in Africa and et cetera. And the amount of people that he's met with and worked with is fascinating to me.

• 49:46Harry Stebbings?

  What was the best piece of advice you've been given?

• 49:48Speaker 00

  I don't know if it's advice, but it was a reminder that my dad used to say all the time, nobody ever said life was going to be easy. And every time I'd come to him and complain, he'd be like, well, I don't know why you thought that was going to be easy. Nobody ever said life was going to be easy.

• 50:00Harry Stebbings?

  What do you do to de-stress?

• 50:01Speaker 00

  Alcohol helps at the end of the day, unfortunately. I mean, in all seriousness, as anybody in a really high-stress job, you kind of develop healthy habits or coping mechanisms, right? Depends how you want to look at them. But for me, you know, coming home and having a beer after work, but really exercise. Like, I love mountain biking, I love trail running, I love music. Nothing helps like a beer.

• 50:26Harry Stebbings?

  I was expecting like, I go and I do 13 miles on a trail. And I was like, yeah, Heineken.

• 50:32Speaker 00

  I do whatever I need to get through the day.

• 50:35Harry Stebbings?

  That is amazing. Dave, where are you in 10 years' time? It's 2033. You still CEO of Deckers, doing something else? What do you want for your 10 years?

• 50:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, 10 years is like a lifetime for me now. You know, I'm in my upper 50s and whether I'm at Deckers or not, my ambition is to be doing something that is still super creative. I need that in my life. I need creative outlets. I need to be able to, you know, explore that and push that. I'm not an artist or a musician or anything like that, but I have so many other creative interests. And then, you know, it's something that is very purposeful and giving back.

• 51:08Harry Stebbings?

  Dave, I've absolutely loved this. You've been fantastic to have on. I can't thank you enough for putting up with my pressing questions.

• 51:15Speaker 00

  I loved it, this is great. I'd love your questions.

• 51:18Harry Stebbings?

  You were fantastic, so thank you.

• 51:19Speaker 00

  No, thanks.

• 51:22Harry Stebbings?

  Now, if you want to watch the full episode, then you can check it out on YouTube by searching for 20VC, that's 20VC on YouTube. But before we leave you today, there is no shortage of helpful AI tools out there. But using them means switching back and forth between yet another digital tool. What was supposed to simplify your workflow just made it way more complicated. Unless, of course, you're in Notion. Notion combines your notes, docs and projects into one space that's simple and beautifully designed. And you can leverage the power of AI right inside Notion across all your notes and docs without jumping between your work and with a separate AI-powered tool. Automate the tedious tasks like summarizing meeting notes or finding next steps, freeing you up to do the deep work.

• 52:06Harry Stebbings?

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• 52:50Harry Stebbings?

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• 53:33Harry Stebbings?

  Check them out now at navan.com/20vc. As always, I so appreciate all your support and have a wonderful Christmas break.