Pod Insights How I Built This with Guy Raz Title Nine: Missy Park (October 2021) About this episode As a college basketball player, Missy Park was lucky to grow up during the early era of Title IX, the 1972 law that created new opportunities for young women in sports. But in the years before Lululemon and Athleta, activewear for women was either ill-fitting or non-existent. So in 1989—with little experience in apparel or retail—Missy launched a female version of Nike. She sent out a mail-order catalog of running shorts, tights, and (at the last minute) sports bras, naming her company for the law that had opened doors for her to compete. Over the years, Title Nine kept "hitting singles," eventually growing into a $100 million business without ever taking outside investment. Today, Missy remains the sole owner.
This episode was produced by J. C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research by Claire Murashima.
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Transcript 14,303 words · 4 speakers
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5:18 Guy Raz? Hey, everyone. It's Guy here. So this week, we're bringing you a really great episode from the archive. It's with Missy Park, who came on the show to tell a story of Title IX, the women's sports apparel brand. The company had a pretty rocky launch in the late 1980s, but as you'll hear, a last-minute addition to its mail-order catalog changed everything. This episode first ran back in October of 2021, and I hope you enjoy it.
5:51 Guy Raz? So you get these catalogs, 15,000 or 20,000 catalogs. And how did you do? How many orders did you get from those?
5:58 Speaker 01 So we put those catalogs and then I'm just waiting for the phone to ring.
6:04 Guy Raz? Yeah. And?
6:06 Speaker 01 Waiting.
6:07 Guy Raz? And?
6:08 Speaker 01 Waiting.
6:09 Guy Raz? OK.
6:10 Speaker 01 And I think we got a whopping, maybe 15 orders. Maybe seven of them were from someone that I did not know.
6:19 Guy Raz? Wow. That's from mailing out over 20,000 catalogs.
6:23 Speaker 01 Yes.
6:24 Guy Raz? That's the hit rate.
6:25 Speaker 01 Super sad. Super sad.
6:33 Guy Raz? Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
6:45 Guy Raz? I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Missy Parks' frustration with bad-fitting sports gear led her to launch Title IX, one of the very first American sportswear brands exclusively for women.
7:03 Guy Raz? About a year ago, I was riding my bike near the railroad tracks in Berkeley, California, when I passed a clothing store with an unusual name. The store was called Title IX, and I thought it might have something to do with a law, but a law I couldn't remember right at that moment. So a few days later, I looked it up. Title IX, I was reminded, was a US civil rights law passed in 1972. It prohibited discrimination based on sex in any federally funded school or educational program. And among the things the law did was to open up high school and college sports to women.
7:45 Guy Raz? Colleges and universities that received federal dollars now had to provide the same opportunities for women to participate in sports as they did for men. In that year, 1972, less than 20% of all the athletes on the US Olympic team were women. But by 2016, nearly 55% of the team was female. And much of this is because of Title IX. The same year Title IX was required to take effect in schools, 1976, Missy Park joined her high school basketball team in Greenville, South Carolina. She'd go on to play Division One basketball at Yale.
8:27 Guy Raz? But after years of wearing bad-fitting sports apparel as a student athlete, Missy decided to solve her own problem. And in 1989, long before anyone would hear the names Lululemon or Athleta, Missy Park founded Title IX, one of the first brands to make sports apparel for women. Now, today, many of those other brands are multi-billion dollar companies, either backed by venture capital or publicly traded. But Title IX is comparatively small. This year, it will do roughly $100 million in revenue. And unlike its competitors, Title IX is owned only by one person, Missy Park.
9:11 Guy Raz? She bootstrapped the brand from day one and built it very, very slowly. If the company grew by 5% or even 10% a year, that was considered a victory. And that slow growth has allowed the company to build a sustainable and supportive culture. Missy Park grew up in the 60s and 70s in Greenville, South Carolina, in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Her dad was a World War II veteran and became kind of an overnight entrepreneur when he bought the small manufacturing company that he once worked for. And as for her mom...
9:48 Speaker 01 My mom, on the other hand, was a stay-at-home mom, and we always accuse her of being part of a secret feminist cell in Greenville, South Carolina in the 60s.
10:00 Guy Raz? Because she was what?
10:02 Speaker 01 She thought women ought to be paid for birthing babies.
10:05 Guy Raz? Yeah.
10:06 Speaker 01 I would say that was pretty ahead of her time. My mom and dad had separate checking accounts. I remember my mom fighting to get her credit card in her own name rather than in Mrs. Russell Hunter Park. So my mom loved being a full-time homemaker, but she thought it was a position worth paying for.
10:24 Guy Raz? And this was really, I mean, this is, people don't remember. I mean, the 70s was, I mean, this is the era of ERA, Equal Rights Amendment, and of Shirley Chisholm and Bella Absug, you know, with her hats, right? There was huge leaps and strides that happened in the 70s. And from your description of your mom, she was either secretly harboring those feelings or maybe not so secretly harboring them.
10:51 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, you know, my parents were so unusual. Like, my mom was in charge of the girls and our allowances. And we had budgets, and we had to reconcile at the end of every month. And we had to give money to savings and to offerings. And each year, we would take on other responsibilities. It was her expectation that we would go up to be financially independent women capable of running our own finances and our own life.
11:21 Guy Raz? Yeah. And as a little girl, or maybe even a young teen, did you know for sure you were not going to end up living in Greenville, South Carolina?
11:34 Speaker 01 No, I would say I'm the kind of person that maybe everybody else is for sure about it, and no one's more surprised than me. You know, I really loved growing up in Greenville. It was, at the time, a great place for me. It's a small place. I could ride my bike everywhere. I was in that first generation of girls and women that were able to grow up with Title IX being in effect.
12:01 Speaker 01 All the way through high school and all the way through college.
12:04 Guy Raz? And of course, Title Nine just kind of opened up sports for women and girls at the time, and you got to play lots of things.
12:13 Speaker 01 Yes, I got to play every sport. You know, I mean, coming up when I did, especially as a girl, you just played all the sports. And if you were willing to play and you were willing to try, you were pretty good because there weren't as many women pouring into the sports and fields as there are now. So, yes, we will say, Guy, I think that I was a big fish in a very small pond. I think that's what I'll say.
12:40 Guy Raz? Well, I'm curious, because here you are, you were in a small, southern town in the 70s, being a debutante is a, was, to some extent still is, but less so, was a kind of a cultural phenomenon in the South. Was there, like, were you a debutante, for example?
13:00 Speaker 01 Oh, my gosh, I hate your guts right now. So, let's just go on the record right now, I hate your guts. Yes, I was a debutante. Now, you and me and all of your listeners know that. And in my home office here, you could see my little rebellion against that. There's a picture of me, what, about 19, in a white gown with long gloves that actually won't go up above my upper arm and biceps, sadly. And I'm spinning a basketball and I have my basketball sneakers on.
13:36 Guy Raz? So, you were forced or kind of pressured to be a debutante?
13:40 Speaker 01 You know, here's the danger of things like that. Yeah, I'm just a kid, this is where I grew up. And now I look back on it and I see it differently. But it was one of those things, you know, I love my mom and dad and had very quickly understood, like, there's some battles that if you can give in and it's not much skin off my back, then I should just do it because it's going to make my mom so happy. But it is the source of a lot of amusement amongst my family and close friends, more because it's so different.
14:15 Guy Raz? From who you are.
14:16 Speaker 01 From who I am. Exactly.
14:19 Guy Raz? And how would you describe yourself as a teenager? Were you, did you get along with everybody? Were you a pleaser?
14:28 Speaker 01 No. Definitely not a pleaser. I would say I'm pretty loud. I speak before I think.
14:37 Guy Raz? Yeah.
14:37 Speaker 01 I have strong opinions.
14:39 Guy Raz? Yeah.
14:39 Speaker 01 That can change quickly. I think I was an okay student. I think I got along well with most folks. Yeah.
14:48 Guy Raz? I mean, you must have been better than an okay student because you went to Yale. You attended Yale.
14:54 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. Well, I will also tell you this, that we joke about it in my family, but my parents' single greatest failing is that they have a daughter that went to Yale.
15:03 Guy Raz? Because?
15:06 Speaker 01 There's an awful lot of good schools in the South.
15:09 Guy Raz? Sure.
15:10 Speaker 01 And there are.
15:11 Guy Raz? Yeah.
15:11 Speaker 01 So I think, then I think my parents really wanted me to go to one of those great southern schools.
15:17 Guy Raz? All right, you're 1980, I think, about 1980. You get to New Haven.
15:20 Speaker 01 Yep.
15:21 Guy Raz? You played several sports there, lacrosse, tennis and basketball. You are an athlete. That is your, was that your identity, your self-identity as an athlete?
15:31 Speaker 01 Totally.
15:31 Guy Raz? Yeah. You get to Yale, you're Missy Park, the basketball player.
15:36 Speaker 01 Yes, the southern basketball player when I get to Yale.
15:39 Guy Raz? Yeah. And, and just to be clear, there were, there were women's sports, right? At, at Yale. There had, had been for a long time.
15:46 Speaker 01 Yep.
15:47 Guy Raz? Yep. But the difference when you got there was Title IX, which had been, was passed in, in 1972, was in full effect, right?
15:54 Speaker 01 Right.
15:55 Guy Raz? And, and so what did that mean when you, when you got to Yale in 1980 as a student athlete?
16:00 Speaker 01 Well, I think a lot with my generation in particular, Guy, you know, yes, Title IX was passed, yes, the seventies had happened, but...
16:10 Speaker 01 We were still in that place of everything that we gain is a loss for the guys on the other side of it.
16:20 Guy Raz? That was a perspective that you as a woman athlete are taking away resources from me as a male athlete.
16:28 Speaker 01 Exactly. And in some ways, yes, that was true. It's like all of a sudden, the men's basketball team doesn't have the pick of all of the basketball practice times. They have to share them with the women's team.
16:43 Guy Raz? Did those four years feel like there were battles?
16:46 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, I think it also, it goes to sort of the genesis of Title IX, The Company, is, you know, me and my teammates are getting uniforms that are hand-me-down men's uniforms. I remember my, my buddy Regina Sullivan, she wore, I think, like a size six and a half women's shoe, but they don't make women's shoes. So she had to go to like, the little kids department at Macy's and buy some little boy sneakers. So the sense of having to create the traditions around a team, what it means to get success,
17:28 Speaker 01 while at the same time, fighting for the good practice times, marketing support in the community, those were battles being fought on two fronts, for sure. And as I said, the genesis of Title IX, I mean, I remember my buddies and I, we were all like, oh, when we graduate from college, we're gonna go get some experience, and then we're gonna start the women's version of Nike. Of course, they all went and got really good jobs, you know, in investment banking.
17:59 Guy Raz? Finance, right? Sure.
18:01 Speaker 01 Finance, Procter and Gamble, Microsoft, and I was the only one that actually ended up not getting one of those good jobs, so I had to figure out something else to do.
18:09 Guy Raz? All right, you graduate in around 84, and from what I gather, you wanted, you decided that you would go into, into coaching, that maybe you would like explore becoming a professional coach of some sort.
18:21 Speaker 01 Right. I was lucky enough to be offered a job at our arch rival at Harvard.
18:30 Speaker 01 And then I found it very difficult to coach against my former teammates and a job opened up at Yale the following year. But I think I realized at that point that coaching a team was never going to be the same thing as playing on a team.
18:49 Guy Raz? Yeah, I, there's a book by David Epstein called The Sports Gene and, and he makes an analogy between a player and a coach. And the analogy is just because you're a bird, it doesn't mean you can be an ornithologist. And I think that's right.
19:05 Speaker 01 Well, yes, correct.
19:10 Guy Raz? And I think that's right. All right. So you realize that, that, that college or basketball coaching is not the right fit for you. And it's the mid eighties. You're from Greenville, South Carolina. You're living in New England. What got you out to the West Coast? What was it?
19:28 Speaker 01 I knew I didn't want to live in the South.
19:30 Guy Raz? Okay.
19:31 Speaker 01 I knew I didn't want to be cold.
19:33 Guy Raz? Fair enough.
19:34 Speaker 01 I knew I didn't have any money.
19:37 Guy Raz? Yep.
19:38 Speaker 01 My brother lived in California. So I packed up my, I had a Toyota pickup truck. I packed up all of my worldly belongings. And my parents had given me a tent for graduation from college because they knew exactly what I would want, right?
20:00 Guy Raz? A tent. That's a, yeah.
20:01 Speaker 01 A tent, right? Like who, what southern parent? I mean, like who would do that? Right? But they knew I wanted a tent. So I, in those days, you had to seam seal the tent to seal up all the little needle holes so it wouldn't leak. And I'm unrolling the tent and I'm taking off the hang tag and I look at it and it says, The North Face, 999 Harrison Street, Berkeley, California.
20:26 Guy Raz? Wow.
20:28 Speaker 01 So I moved in with my brother. I'd also led some bike trips for kids. And so I really loved cycling. And it's like, okay, I either want to work for a bike company or I want to work for The North Face.
20:42 Guy Raz? Yeah.
20:43 Speaker 01 So. I started just walking into bike shops, asking them, you know, about bike companies that were in California and how I might get a job. And one of those bike shops, I ran into a guy by the name of Michael Phillips, who happened to be a sales rep for some old bike brand. And he's like, you're looking for a job? He's like, well, why don't you come ride with me in my van for a day while I call on customers? I can teach you about the business.
21:13 Guy Raz? Wow.
21:14 Speaker 01 Well, my brother had different ideas.
21:16 Guy Raz? Right. He was like, this guy's creepy. Don't do it.
21:19 Speaker 01 Exactly. So while that was going on, Michael, and then at the same time, I was kind of trying to find my way into the North Face. And I had heard at the time that there was another young woman about my age that was leading up the equipment division at the North Face, a woman by the name of Sally McCoy, who was from Charlotte, North Carolina, and had gone to Dartmouth and was a little bit older than I was. I was like, okay, she's the person I need to talk to.
21:47 Guy Raz? Yeah.
21:47 Speaker 01 But I can't get anybody, right? You know, you're not emailing people. Like, maybe you write them a letter. I don't know what you do. Well, what I do is I find out 999 Harrison Street and I walk into the reception area and I'm like, I'd like to see Sally McCoy. And they're like, well, do you have an appointment? No, I don't. But, well, she's busy. I'm like, okay, well, I'll just wait. So I wait and I wait and I'm there pretty much all day.
22:23 Guy Raz? Yeah.
22:24 Speaker 01 And finally, this guy comes down the stairs that jump into the front lobby. And he's like, you know, you've been here a long time. Is there anybody helping you? And I'm like, well, no, I really want to talk to this woman Sally McCoy, but she seems to be very busy. He goes, well, maybe I can help you. This guy's name was Mark Erickson, and he was, I think, the vice president of product. I was super disappointed to be talking to him, but. He ended up getting my foot in the door at the North Face and I ended up meeting Sally McCoy and a really interesting group of businesswomen.
23:08 Speaker 01 And that was really my first exposure to a real job.
23:16 Guy Raz? I mean, it's interesting because you wanted to work for that company. You were a student athlete and you were really passionate. And one of your principles as a leader is hire for passion. You can train people to do the business stuff. Don't worry about skills or training, like hire for passion, which I think is
23:33 Speaker 01 Yes.
23:34 Guy Raz? A thousand percent right. Like, people have to believe in the mission of what you're doing. That's more important than anything else. And then you can train them.
23:43 Speaker 01 Well, I think that was it. They had this thing that needed doing and it was very entrepreneurial. You just had such a broad range of things that you could do. I mean, they strongly believed in the it's easier to be forgiven than to obtain permission rule.
24:00 Guy Raz? Yeah.
24:01 Speaker 01 So it's a great, and right, I honestly, you know, I think about it. It was such a good, so the first job I got, strangely enough, was putting together a retail point of sale catalog for them. So it's going to be like a magazine that was going to sit in their retail stores. I mean, I don't have any skills. I mean, like, literally zero skills. And there I am. I'm working with a graphic designer. I'm working with photographers. I'm going on photo shoots. I wrote copy for about products that I didn't really know anything about. Fortunately, there was a lot of supervision. I really wasn't doing all that, but I was sort of the person kind of making sure
24:44 Speaker 01 everything held together in the end.
24:47 Guy Raz? Yeah. And by the way, I think while you were at North Face, you met someone who worked there who would eventually become your life partner, your wife, right?
24:58 Speaker 01 That's right. Actually, how I met her is
25:02 Speaker 01 Sally had recommended that all of the managers, Sally McCoy, the original woman I want to talk to, had recommended that all the managers take a look and see if they had any job openings. And Dana, my wife, happened to have one. So I actually interviewed with Dana for the job that she had that I really, really wanted, even though I was colossally unsuited for it.
25:30 Speaker 01 So I did not get the job, but more importantly, I got the girl.
25:35 Guy Raz? Yeah.
25:36 Speaker 01 And the truth of the matter is that my buddy, Michael Phillips, who was not an ax murderer, but ended up being a very good man who mentored me. He actually hooked me up with Fisher Mountain Bikes and I applied for a job there. I didn't get the job at Fisher Mountain Bikes, but I, my parents raised me right and they told me to make sure to write thank you notes. And the person they did hire ended up not working out. And they called me and said, hey, the job's yours if you want it. So I went to work at Fisher, which was one of the first, if not the first, mountain bike company.
26:15 Guy Raz? Yeah, I think it was Gary Fisher, right?
26:17 Speaker 01 Yes.
26:18 Guy Raz? I mean, these are pioneers of like outdoor gear, mountain biking.
26:22 Speaker 01 And I got to work with them and I'm like 26.
26:25 Guy Raz? Yeah.
26:26 Speaker 01 And I think good job experience is wasted on the young. That's what I think in my short version is that. So I went to work at Fisher in inside sales. And that was me calling on bike shops. But suffice it to say, most bike shop guys were not used to having a woman calling them on the phone.
26:49 Guy Raz? I mean, you must have really stood out. I mean, here we are talking in 2021. You've been in California since 1985 and I mean, your accent sticks out, right? I mean, you really rarely run into people in Berkeley with a South Carolina accent.
27:07 Speaker 01 No, I know. Yeah, I think I stuck out for good or ill.
27:13 Guy Raz? And you were, from what I read, I think your brother lived across the bay, south of the airport in Foster City. Eventually, presumably, you moved to Berkeley because you were working for, you would work for Fisher and for North Face.
27:30 Speaker 01 Yes, I had a job with a paycheck, so I could afford to have a room and a house.
27:36 Guy Raz? When you were a student athlete, right, you, I imagine, were already thinking about the fact that the clothing made for women athletes was not well thought out.
27:49 Speaker 01 Right.
27:49 Guy Raz? While you were working at North Face, you were, from what I read, like, you were thinking about this, like, problem, that there was no good athletic gear for women.
28:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, you know, Guy, it's funny, because here's the thing I think about a lot. I mean, I'm assuming you know about the narrative fallacy, right? Like, this idea that we end up at a certain place, and then we make up this really nice story that proceeds logically from point A to point Z.
28:19 Guy Raz? Yeah.
28:20 Speaker 01 It's just, it's just a lie. So I want to tell all this to you, but it's going to be completely misleading, that like, "Oh, and then I went to Yale, where I found ill-fitting uniforms, and then I went to the North Face and was frustrated by..." No, I was just, I guess I think, I used to think, to use an old-school analogy, I used to think I was the person operating the flippers on the pinball machine.
28:47 Guy Raz? Uh huh.
28:47 Speaker 01 I'm the ball.
28:48 Guy Raz? Right.
28:50 Speaker 01 You know, I mean, I think that's, so I'm having all of these experiences, right?
28:55 Guy Raz? You were bouncing around.
28:56 Speaker 01 Right, I'm just bouncing around. 500 points, free ball, yay, okay, I'm going to play, I'm going to keep playing.
29:04 Speaker 01 But, so I want to make sure, like, that part of it is clear. This was, I mean, I am, I am not foresighted enough to have planned what happened to me.
29:15 Guy Raz? And just to be clear, almost nobody who's been on the show is. There's no, I can't think of a single story where somebody said, you know, "I was 18, I had this vision, now I'm 55," and, you know, it kind of unfolds over time, and it's like being the ball in the pinball machine.
29:31 Speaker 01 Yes, exactly. Um, and I think that's it, you know, so I can look back and I can see the thread.
29:38 Guy Raz? Yeah.
29:38 Speaker 01 Like I can look back on my time as a kid, you know, I'm like eight or nine or 10 years old. And at the time, there was basically one sports magazine.
29:48 Guy Raz? Yeah.
29:48 Speaker 01 Sports Illustrated. And I would go through every single one of them and try and find pictures of women athletes.
29:55 Guy Raz? Mm hmm.
29:56 Speaker 01 And I would painstakingly cut them out and put them on a poster board and have it up in my room.
30:02 Guy Raz? Hmm.
30:03 Speaker 01 So you could say, like, it was already in me then. I wasn't thinking like, and therefore, I am going to start.
30:10 Guy Raz? Right.
30:11 Speaker 01 Um, a women's athletic apparel company.
30:13 Guy Raz? Right.
30:14 Speaker 01 But the seeds were there early, trying to create a vision of what I could be.
30:21 Guy Raz? What was women's sportswear in, in the eighties? I mean, Nike had been making stuff, but what did that mean?
30:29 Speaker 01 Well, it was kind of aerobics, right?
30:31 Guy Raz? Yeah.
30:32 Speaker 01 I mean, Jane Fonda, it's kind of that kind of stuff. I mean, I think about, you know, for me, when you play college sports, you get all your gear given to you, ill-fitting or not, it's given to you.
30:43 Guy Raz? Yeah.
30:43 Speaker 01 Um, it's given to you, they wash it for you. If it wears out, you get a new one. It's not your concern. Then I graduate from college and all of a sudden I'm having to buy my own gear. And there's nowhere to find anything that's built or designed specifically for women. You know, there's no Lululemons, there's no, there's, there's nothing. Literally, there is nothing. And really, I mean, if you think about it, it's, it's just math, right? Um, Title IX was passed in 72.
31:17 Guy Raz? Mm hmm.
31:17 Speaker 01 So I, I was in that first generation. There was no market.
31:22 Guy Raz? What, what was it that, I mean, you're 27 and
31:28 Guy Raz? You decide at that age to start your own business. Were you frustrated working in for a bigger company? Did you, were you just one of these people who had to be your own boss? How did, what do you remember about that time in your life that led you to that decision?
31:46 Speaker 01 I would say probably that, you know, I think about the North Face. You know, I had great jobs, but I'm 26 and I'm like, boy, these guys are kind of idiots. If they can run these businesses, then anybody can do it. You know, because I'm 26.
32:06 Guy Raz? 26.
32:07 Speaker 01 And I know everything.
32:08 Guy Raz? Of course you do.
32:09 Speaker 01 You know, so it was frustration. They wouldn't do everything that I wanted them to do. They probably don't even pay any attention to me. I'm like some entry level person.
32:21 Guy Raz? Right.
32:21 Speaker 01 They don't, you know, they're busy. They've actually got important decisions to make where I'm down here seeing how idiotic everything is.
32:28 Guy Raz? Yeah.
32:29 Speaker 01 So I'm so confident, right?
32:31 Guy Raz? I remember that feeling.
32:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:32 Guy Raz? Yeah.
32:33 Speaker 01 And I think, and my favorite part of it is just like, and now, Guy, I'm the idiot.
32:39 Guy Raz? But you know what? Here's the thing, because we're both, we're both talking, we're both, you know, older and we're talking about remembering that feeling. And if you are listening and you are 26, it's okay to think that I'm an idiot or Missy's an idiot, because that's the fuel you need to do something stupid enough to start a business that will ultimately be a good decision.
33:01 Speaker 01 Right. I mean, those are very, like, people say, oh, how did you do that when you were 26? And I have to say, it's the only time to do it.
33:10 Guy Raz? Yeah. And, and this is 1989, I think, when you decided to start the business. And what, what, what did you tell yourself? Did you say, you know, I'm going to start a women's apparel company because it's always been on my mind? Like, what, what, how did you describe it to people? And they say, so what are you going to do now, Missy?
33:28 Speaker 01 Well, first I did zero market research. My market research was me and my friends, which let's just be very clear, is a very small group of people.
33:35 Guy Raz? You just said, hey, would you use this?
33:39 Speaker 01 Hey, you need shorts that fit women, don't you?
33:42 Guy Raz? Yeah.
33:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, me too.
33:43 Guy Raz? Yeah.
33:45 Speaker 01 But I had enough to say, okay, there's not enough people in Berkeley, California, to support a retail store just for women athletes.
33:59 Guy Raz? Yeah.
34:00 Speaker 01 So I need to do something that's more national so I can find all the women who need workout and fitness gear. So I did sort of what is the precursor to the internet is that was a mail order catalog.
34:16 Guy Raz? And did you have, I mean, let's just back up for a second. I mean, what kind of money did you have to start an apparel company? Presumably you had some savings from your job.
34:28 Speaker 01 Yes, I did, exactly. I had like 30,000 bucks and I can tell you.
34:31 Guy Raz? It's pretty good.
34:31 Speaker 01 Sort of, yeah, I mean, I had 30,000 bucks.
34:33 Guy Raz? It's a nice, it's a nice amount of cash, yeah.
34:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, okay, but what people were telling me is, you know, this time, right? This is 1989 and I'm talking to as many people as I could possibly talk to. I'm calling anybody that'll talk to me on the phone.
34:48 Guy Raz? Asking them what?
34:49 Speaker 01 Uh, hey, I've decided I want to start a mail order catalog. You have started one. And all of them told me, if you're going to do this, you need at least a half a million dollars.
35:00 Guy Raz? To start a mail order catalog business? Because this was 89, this is how you marketed. You sent out millions of catalogs and then hopefully people would.
35:08 Speaker 01 Or not millions, guy, or not millions.
35:11 Guy Raz? Or not, okay. So people said, you need, you need at least a half a million bucks to make this work.
35:16 Speaker 01 Yep.
35:17 Guy Raz? That's intimidating.
35:18 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, I was like, well, I, I don't have a half a million dollars. I have, I have 30,000 dollars. So I call up my dad. I said, so dad, I'm super excited because I'm, I've got an idea for a business.
35:33 Guy Raz? Yep.
35:34 Speaker 01 And the best part about it is that no one else is doing it.
35:41 Guy Raz? Yeah.
35:41 Speaker 01 And he's quiet for a second and he said, there might be a good reason for that, missy.
35:53 Guy Raz? When we come back in just a moment, how Missy struggles for months and then years to get Title IX going, and how she discovers the one item of clothing that will give the business a much-needed boost. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.
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40:02 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1989 and Missy has decided to quit her job and put $30,000 of her own money into launching a mail order catalog for women's sportswear. And that $30,000 is pretty much all she has to spend on everything, including the clothes.
40:26 Speaker 01 But the good news is that there are all these big manufacturers and small manufacturers who are starting to think about the coming women's market. Now, the retail stores are not necessarily buying the stuff because obviously they're worried about the customer coming in today. But these manufacturers have to think about tomorrow. So lots of manufacturers were starting to what they used to call shrink it and pink it, and I think they still call it that. They take their men's stuff and they do it over in pink and call it a day and make it smaller. So, but the good news about that is there were a lot of also small brands of women my
41:06 Speaker 01 age or a little bit older who were also starting to design and manufacture women's athletic apparel.
41:15 Guy Raz? So the idea was that you were not going to manufacture your own stuff. You were going to find-
41:20 Speaker 01 Couldn't afford it.
41:20 Guy Raz? Right, you couldn't afford it. You're going to find manufacturers, buy their stuff-
41:24 Speaker 01 Exactly.
41:25 Guy Raz? ... and then put it in the, have a catalog and that would be it. And eventually, I'm assuming you got connected to probably smaller manufacturers?
41:35 Speaker 01 Yeah, exactly. So, yes, I could, we could have gone into manufacturing and that probably would have cost me a half a million dollars, more, an unlimited amount of money. But what I realized pretty quickly is there were enough of these small brands, you know... Pearl Azumi, Moving Comfort was like the first women's running brand. So I started calling on folks like that and you know, mostly what I did is, well, one, again, I don't, I'm operating out of a garage in the house that I have a room in.
42:12 Guy Raz? You're living in like a group house with other?
42:14 Speaker 01 Yeah. I'm living in a group house and I wanted the cheapest rent, so I got the room that was actually the garage.
42:23 Guy Raz? Nice.
42:23 Speaker 01 So, yeah, nice. So I have to go outside to go to the bathroom, to come back in the house, go, yeah, whatever. And I'm trying to get these manufacturers to talk to me, but they're not going to talk to me if I'm meeting them in my garage. So I would go down to my brother's office in Foster City, I can't remember where he was, and I would meet people there in his office. So it'd be like official, right?
42:48 Guy Raz? This is pre-WeWork, you could, or right?
42:50 Speaker 01 Yeah, way pre-
42:51 Guy Raz? Pre-Starbucks, really?
42:53 Speaker 01 Exactly. It was pre-everything. So how am I going to fake this?
42:56 Guy Raz? Yeah.
42:58 Speaker 01 And, and then finally, one of them asked me, it's like, so what, what's going on here? And it ended up being the, the sales rep for Moving Comfort. And so then I just said, well, I'm, I'm starting and I really, I don't have an office, this is my brother's office. And she was very kind to me. She said, well, look, I'm gonna, I've met you, I can see you're real. Why don't we just come? I'll just come and show you the line. I'll show it to you in your living room. And Moving Comfort was one of the first businesses that, I mean, they became our bank.
43:32 Guy Raz? And they, they were a manufacturer, Moving Comfort?
43:35 Speaker 01 Yep, a brand like Nike, but a small one.
43:38 Guy Raz? A small one. And they, they were like, okay, we're, we're willing to work with you.
43:42 Speaker 01 Yeah.
43:42 Guy Raz? And at this point, I know it's mainly you by yourself, right? Actually running the company, but I mean, did you have any help or, or support?
43:51 Speaker 01 Yes. I just was surrounded by a whole bunch of people.
43:57 Speaker 01 Who were willing and fired up about this idea?
44:02 Guy Raz? Who were they?
44:03 Speaker 01 My teammates, right? I was playing ultimate frisbee. My teammates were my early models. And then one of my teammates happened to be a woman who was an editor at a women's sports and fitness magazine. So she became my first copy editor. She had a friend who was a graphic designer. So she designed the catalog for free. I had another friend who I met playing basketball. And she designed, because you had to have a corporate package. I don't know why, but that's what you needed. A corporate package was like a logo.
44:40 Guy Raz? Yeah.
44:40 Speaker 01 A letterhead, an envelope, all these things.
44:43 Guy Raz? A brand, they call it a brand bible now, I think.
44:45 Speaker 01 Yeah, you had to have that. So my friend Lisa did it all and threw in a T-shirt for $90.
44:54 Speaker 01 Okay, that sounds like a good price.
44:55 Guy Raz? And the name, the name, which is a great name, was it, had you thought of that name? Yeah.
45:00 Speaker 01 That was the thing that was kind of hanging me up. Is I couldn't come up with a name. I come, I've gone through like four or five and somebody had all of them. You know, I was like, oh, it'll be cheetah sports because the female cheetah is whatever. Yeah, faster. And then I remember I was up on Telegraph, maybe walking around Mo's Books or that other bookstore that was right next to it.
45:25 Guy Raz? Yep.
45:26 Speaker 01 And I was just looking through books and I picked up this book and it was writing about the history of women's sports in America. And I started reading it and I was like, oh, Title IX. That's what I'll name my, and that was it. You know, no one wanted that name, unsurprisingly. So I named it Title IX after that piece of legislation that. Ensure that I got to play sports all the way through high school and college.
45:57 Guy Raz? Yeah. And you were, the idea was you were gonna sell like, like running shorts and, and tights and things like that?
46:05 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, remember, the customer was me. So, very narrow group of people, but it was me. I had, um, we had tights, we had running shorts, we had cycling shorts. We really didn't have much in the way of tops because you got all your tops for free at the races and the tournaments that you went to.
46:25 Guy Raz? Oh, okay.
46:25 Speaker 01 I was not a merchant.
46:26 Guy Raz? I mean, it's, it's interesting because today, you know, Tideland is, is very well known for sports bras, uh, for women. But that was not part, like, you weren't thinking, oh, we're gonna sell sports bras?
46:37 Speaker 01 Well, so I put together this assortment of stuff, and it's a tiny little flyer of stuff, and I really do not know anything about the apparel industry. I, I knew what I was able to glean at the North Face, but I'm just putting, assembling a group of merchandise that I can get people to sell to me on credit. And then at the last minute, I got in touch with a sales rep who was representing two women who had invented, I didn't know this at the time, but had invented the first sports bra.
47:10 Guy Raz? Hmm.
47:11 Speaker 01 And I'm, I'm super flat-chested. We're gonna say double A on a good day. So, that's an afterthought for me, but this guy, it was a guy because most of the sales reps at that time were guys.
47:21 Guy Raz? Right, right.
47:22 Speaker 01 Um, he, he says, you know, I really think you oughta put these sports bras in there.
47:27 Guy Raz? And by the way, were sports bras widely used in, in 1989?
47:31 Speaker 01 No, no, no, I was like, ugh.
47:32 Guy Raz? So what did women do, who were, women athletes do, for support?
47:37 Speaker 01 They'd wear two and three bras, guy.
47:40 Guy Raz? Oh, wow.
47:41 Speaker 01 So, anyway, it's almost an afterthought. We bought some sports bras and we'd done all the shooting. It was all in color. And so, I just had time to take some real quick black and white photos, and we put them on what was then called the order form.
47:55 Guy Raz? This is in the catalog?
47:56 Speaker 01 Yeah, in, in the catalog, and then there's an order form in there.
47:59 Guy Raz? Yeah.
48:00 Speaker 01 And so, I put them in there, and... I think we sent out like 15,000 catalogs.
48:08 Guy Raz? And by the way, I'm looking at a photo, some photos from that first catalog. And it is not a slick production at all. It is, I mean, it's cool because all the, all the models are, are women athletes. And they're not like glamour shots or some action shots, but they're very authentic. And these were like, these were your friends.
48:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, yep. All like people I mostly that I played ultimate frisbee with, or went road riding or mountain biking with, or that I worked with at the North Face.
48:39 Guy Raz? So you've got the catalog up and running. And I'm assuming you had to order a bunch of stuff with your, the small amount of capital you had and just hold it in your, in your where?
48:52 Speaker 01 Garage.
48:52 Guy Raz? In where you lived, in your room?
48:54 Speaker 01 Yep.
48:54 Guy Raz? Okay. And, and hope, hoping that some, that it would all be sold?
48:58 Speaker 01 Yeah. And our suppliers were our bankers. So I would order stuff, let's say in November, and then I would say, I'd like for you to ship it to me in May, and then I would like to pay you in September.
49:16 Guy Raz? Wow.
49:17 Speaker 01 I mean, it's a little bit of a Ponzi scheme that you hope for.
49:21 Guy Raz? You're just hoping, hoping some, all right. So you get these catalogs, 15,000 or 20,000 catalogs. And, and how did you do? How many orders did you get from those?
49:29 Speaker 01 So we put those catalogs and then I'm just waiting for the phone to ring.
49:36 Guy Raz? Yeah. And?
49:39 Speaker 01 Waiting.
49:40 Guy Raz? And?
49:41 Speaker 01 Waiting.
49:42 Guy Raz? Okay.
49:43 Speaker 01 And I think we got a whopping maybe 15 orders. Maybe seven of them were from someone that I did not know.
49:51 Guy Raz? Wow. That's from mailing out over 20,000 catalogs. That's the hit rate.
49:57 Speaker 01 Super sad.
49:58 Guy Raz? That's crazy.
49:58 Speaker 01 Super sad.
50:00 Guy Raz? But, but, but that makes statistical sense. You got to, right? You're going to, your hit rate is going to be?
50:04 Speaker 01 It did not make statistical, it didn't make any sense to me. You're correct.
50:10 Speaker 01 But one thing that I did notice in this, that all of the people that I didn't know, and many of the ones I did know, put a sports bra on their order. And so while I may not have been the quickest study, you don't have to tell me twice. And I realized like, wow. Sports bras, that is probably now, I know, the most essential piece of sports equipment for the average American woman.
50:41 Guy Raz? Yeah. This is 1989, the year you start. I know that the first four years, it was like really rough. But that first year, not only did you have, you're dealing with like cash flow issues, but that was the year of the earthquake, the big Bay Area earthquake.
51:02 Speaker 01 I remember, you know, I remember exactly because
51:08 Speaker 01 I was so relieved there was an earthquake because we were going through the financials.
51:15 Speaker 01 Not to make light of the earthquake at all, but I just so, I mean, it just is how much the finances weighed on me.
51:23 Guy Raz? Because you were watching not only your bank account dwindle, but you owed people money.
51:28 Speaker 01 Right. And just kind of, you know, the ways you think about so, we did the first catalog, it went poorly, saw a little opportunity for sports bras. So I was going to make the most of that that I could. But I was also even then trying to figure out like, okay, how do I kind of get out of this and just go back and get a job again? I can't just quit after one, but I'll do a second one and it'll be super, super cheap. It'll just be like a folded up piece of paper.
51:58 Guy Raz? Yeah.
51:58 Speaker 01 It's like, super cheap. So I did a super cheap folded up piece of paper. And it did a little better, even though it was a little worse.
52:08 Guy Raz? You were, from what I read, you would order a bunch of stuff and then you would sell it and then some money would come in. And then you would use all that money to send out, to order more stuff and then send out the stuff to people who ordered it. So you were constantly out of cash, like every, right?
52:26 Speaker 01 Yep.
52:27 Guy Raz? It was like cash in and then out, no cash.
52:29 Speaker 01 Constantly, constantly out of cash. And I remember like two times a year I would be. And even now, I sort of have sort of stress reactions around these two times of year. It's the time when we're building up a lot of inventory.
52:44 Guy Raz? Yeah.
52:44 Speaker 01 Um, and you know, there are these two times when you have invested a lot of money in marketing, you've invested a lot of money in inventory and sales are going to come. You hope they're going to come, but you don't know if they are. And it kind of two times a year, I just, I'd just be done. I'm just like.
53:07 Guy Raz? You wanted to quit?
53:08 Speaker 01 Yeah.
53:08 Guy Raz? At one point in those, in the first, I think maybe four years, you were like $200,000 in debt.
53:14 Speaker 01 Yes. That was a lot of dough.
53:17 Guy Raz? But you were thinking, all right, what, what could I do for a living?
53:21 Speaker 01 Right. What can I do for a living where clearly I am self unemployable?
53:27 Guy Raz? And how did you deal with that stress? Did you, did you get depressed? Did you get anxious? Did you lash out?
53:36 Speaker 01 Well, Dana actually had a real job and a good job. So her paycheck was supporting both of us.
53:44 Guy Raz? Oh, wow.
53:45 Speaker 01 So by this time, you know, I, I wasn't taking any money out of the business.
53:49 Guy Raz? She was, she was only your girlfriend at the time and, and supporting you.
53:53 Speaker 01 Yeah. Well, you know, that, that's a matter of laws or a matter of practice, right? Because we, we actually couldn't be officially married until, believe it or not, something like 2012 or 15. I mean, which is crazy. Um, so what would I do in terms of the stress relief? And Dana reminds me of this all the time because it's, you, you never get out of that. I mean, we're always in it for the rest of building a business. You have those times. And my solution then was to call my dad because he was, whenever I talked with him, he always just had like the one good piece of advice that I needed to hold on to. Um, I remember very early on when I was ready to hang it up and I called him and
54:35 Speaker 01 I was just like, God, Dad, I just, it's just, it's not happening. I, I can't learn fast enough. I just don't think I can do it. And then he, he would just go to the business and he's like, well, tell me about your customers. Tell me about how much it costs you to get a new customer now. How much did it cost you to get a customer this time last year? And he would just find the successes.
54:59 Guy Raz? Wow.
55:00 Speaker 01 So I think that's the thing is those little lifelines that that someone can offer you.
55:07 Guy Raz? Yeah.
55:07 Speaker 01 It's not like, oh, and then we got a investor and I got a million dollars and everything was fine.
55:13 Guy Raz? Yeah.
55:13 Speaker 01 It's like, no, there were a lot of little lifelines all along the road and continue to be.
55:19 Guy Raz? I read, and I don't know how much of a big deal this was, but I did see a reference to a flood that destroyed all the inventory at some point. What was that in your, when you were in the garage?
55:32 Speaker 01 In the garage, yeah.
55:33 Guy Raz? Well, how did a flood get in there?
55:37 Speaker 01 I, what happened was we had installed some racks in the garage. And by we, I mean Dana. She's handy, but not super handy. And they probably weren't installed in the most professional manner. So they came crashing down in the middle of the night, but we're not in the garage. We're asleep, we don't hear it. And then there's a rainstorm. And, you know, like Berkeley garages, there's just the water swooped up in there. And I think it was about that point where I decided it was time for us to get real office space.
56:22 Speaker 01 I'm like, this is ridiculous. We need to stop doing this.
56:26 Guy Raz? Yeah.
56:27 Speaker 01 It's probably shortly after that, we moved into, again, another converted warehouse. Just a, it was next to an ice cream manufacturer, also a small entrepreneurial let. And every morning it would smell like chocolate when I came in. So everything that we shipped out started smelling like chocolate.
56:45 Guy Raz? All right, so those, those first four years, there were moments where you really were like very seriously thinking that this was not going to work out. But I guess around 1993, you guys turned a profit for the first time.
57:01 Speaker 01 Yeah.
57:01 Guy Raz? This is four years in, probably not a huge profit, but a profit nonetheless.
57:05 Speaker 01 Yes.
57:06 Guy Raz? And what was that the result of? Was it, was it you were just getting sort of better at managing things and more experienced? Did you hire people? What, what happened?
57:16 Speaker 01 Well, you know, what I would say is, it's just like,
57:22 Speaker 01 Staying in the game, right? I mean, that's just the best way I can describe it. It's just for me, I'm just like, I'm going to just stay in the game here. I'm going to kind of keep hitting little singles. And I think it's, it kind of goes to basically a business philosophy is just sort of fail faster to succeed sooner. And you know, if you're going to make big mistakes, those take a long time. Little mistakes don't take a very long time. You can make a lot of little mistakes really fast. So I think it was just because we didn't have anybody really until we were over $40 million. We didn't have anybody who had retail experience, apparel experience, marketing experience.
58:00 Speaker 01 We had, everybody was just true believers, product users that are really interested in women's outdoor gear and athletic apparel. That's it.
58:11 Guy Raz? I think that the story of Title IX is a story of hitting singles, which is actually a great strategy, right? And a strategy that you can really only do without having outside investors, right? You can't do that if you've got people who expect a 10x return in five to 10 years. You can't just hit singles because no one's going to be that patient.
58:36 Speaker 01 Right.
58:36 Guy Raz? I mean, we've had apparel brands on the show that have raised venture money and, you know. Was that even on your radar? Was that ever even anything you considered or thought about? Or was it just not even something that you thought was an option?
58:53 Speaker 01 I think you always, it always has to stay on your radar because you never know what's going to happen, right? But it's never a real option. I think the time I was most aware of how impossible it would be to go out and get investors is we had a president, the first president we had who came in, Estelle Demuzie. She did a great job running the business. She'd done everything. She bought businesses, sold businesses, and she came in and ran the business for a while. And I said, you know, somebody contacted me from one of the big investment banks. I can't remember who now. And I told Estelle, I said, would you like to talk with this guy? Would you like us to talk to this guy? She's like, sure, let's do it. Let's do it. So the guy comes and I'm meeting with him first.
59:38 Speaker 01 I really literally cannot remember his name anymore, but he comes into the office.
59:43 Speaker 01 And I'm talking to him and guy, literally, the longer I talk, the more nervous he is getting, as if he has walked into some sort of alternate universe that does not speak his language.
59:57 Guy Raz? What were you saying?
59:58 Speaker 01 Just about how we, you know, people want to riding by the door on scooters. So there's chaos. We play a lot of games at work. So there's a lot of stuff going on around. So he's walked into a foreign country. You know, maybe I'm talking about, every year we do something called the Title Nine Olympics, and we divide up into teams and we play sports together for a day. And people, you know, get hurt, hopefully not badly, but you know, we, we play hard. And that just didn't work in his investment banker mind, right? And then Estelle came in and she sits down and she starts talking to him.
1:00:38 Speaker 01 And that guy was so visibly relieved and just talking to her, I just realized, I don't even know the language to talk.
1:00:49 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:00:49 Speaker 01 So to answer your question, do we consider it? Yes.
1:00:56 Speaker 01 Would it have to be someone who is very different from me to really get that deal done? Yes.
1:01:02 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:01:03 Speaker 01 But by the same token, what I would say is if you hit singles, which we do and we're good at, you're not going to hit a grand slam.
1:01:12 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:01:13 Speaker 01 And that's just, you need to make your peace with that. And I think I would take the staying in the game of singles to striking out a whole bunch and every once in a while, getting a grand slam.
1:01:24 Guy Raz? Well, once you became profitable, right? And again, it wasn't like buckets of money, but probably profitable enough where you could pay yourself a little bit of a salary.
1:01:32 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:01:33 Guy Raz? When were you able to actually hire people?
1:01:38 Guy Raz? And pay them a salary.
1:01:40 Speaker 01 Every time someone asks me that, I'm taken back to my own decisions around that and how hard it was. You know, first, we just had people who would help us out and volunteer. And then I remember, and this is probably one of the conflicts and maybe something about being a female entrepreneur, I really wanted to go home to South Carolina for Christmas. And the phones were going to ring and people were going to want to place orders and return product. And I wanted to be in South Carolina and I couldn't be because of the phones. And this was before call forwarding and all the stuff that you could do now. So I had a teammate and I said, hey, and she lived in California. I was like, would you be up for minding the
1:02:24 Speaker 01 store while I go home for Christmas? And she said, sure. And I said, you know, and if it works out, then maybe you can keep doing some work. And so that was really how I hired my first actual paid employee, Renee Thomas Jacobs. We are still good friends. She ended up being our first president. But it felt like a big step, like there's, who can I afford to do this? Or should I just be working harder myself?
1:03:04 Guy Raz? When we come back in just a moment, Title IX keeps hitting singles until Missy makes some miscalculations and the company suddenly finds itself in a slump. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.
1:03:38 Guy Raz? Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the mid 1990s and Title IX has only just become profitable. And Missy is still running the company on a shoestring and still looking for ways to get new customers.
1:03:54 Speaker 01 The way we did it is the old fashioned way. We went to a lot of races and tournaments and we would sell stuff like our excess inventory. We would sell there and we would build up our mailing list by doing that. And then the hard work of building a customer file, selling people a sports bra, selling a woman a sports bra she can't do without and you earn her trust on that and she comes back to you for all of her athletic apparel needs. And to this day, I would say that we are much better at keeping our customers than we are at acquiring new ones.
1:04:37 Speaker 01 That's just always, and I think that's again, that sort of bootstrappy hitting singles. Our customers know that we get them, that we're product users and product testers. So that once they find us, they stay with us for a long time. But it's not like we're going out there and we're going to do a $100 million marketing campaign that's going to net us a whole bunch more new customers all at once. That's just never been the model.
1:05:02 Guy Raz? Was that ever, was it always designed to be a direct? Because this was a direct to consumer business from the beginning. Was it, was that the model from the beginning? Did you ever think, you know, maybe we'll do a collaboration with Macy's or something?
1:05:16 Speaker 01 You know, I think we just weren't sophisticated. I wasn't sophisticated enough to think like that. I was just, I want to control everything that I can. I know it's a delusion, but I still want to control it, right? I mean, certainly people proposed them, but I just couldn't, again, remember, we're mostly selling other people's brands at this point.
1:05:37 Guy Raz? Yeah, but with Title IX on it or was?
1:05:40 Speaker 01 No, it's just with.
1:05:42 Guy Raz? Whatever brand it was.
1:05:43 Speaker 01 Whatever brand it was.
1:05:44 Guy Raz? Okay. And I guess eventually like, like eight years in or something, you finally opened up a store, like a brick and mortar store in Berkeley.
1:05:54 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:05:55 Guy Raz? And. What's interesting to me is today, we're looking at the women's apparel market and it's enormous, right?
1:06:02 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:06:02 Guy Raz? You really are the pioneer. You really created this category.
1:06:06 Speaker 01 Yep.
1:06:07 Guy Raz? With Title IX. I mean, this is long before Lululemon or Athleta or Outdoor Voices, any of those existed. At that point, eight years in, did people get it or was it still a curiosity?
1:06:20 Speaker 01 You know what the most incredible statistic about that first store was? The amazing thing about that store was that over 50% of the customers that came to that store came from more than two hours away.
1:06:36 Guy Raz? Wow. Who were they? Were they, were they high school athletes, college athletes, non?
1:06:44 Speaker 01 Just women that want to work out.
1:06:46 Guy Raz? What age ranges?
1:06:47 Speaker 01 Who want that gear, right? I would say probably, we think of our customers as sort of like that 30 to 50 age range. And it was pretty much that then as well. You know, they're not, they have some disposable income because, you know, at that point, direct or e-comm wasn't as big a thing. There are very few people were willing to buy something sight unseen.
1:07:11 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:07:12 Speaker 01 But what we found mostly was people were coming from all over the country.
1:07:17 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:07:18 Speaker 01 They were flying to SFO and they would come to our store. So we were really looking for that woman who is in the workforce now and is coming into her own, either in aerobic studios or, you know, in the outdoors and needs to find the gear that works for her.
1:07:36 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:07:36 Speaker 01 The second piece, though, I will say, is our sports bra business ended up, there was a small piece of that that ended up being a big part of our business to high school and college athletes. Even now, we have a lot of mother, daughter, first trips to buy sports bras happen in our retail stores.
1:07:57 Guy Raz? I wonder, you know, one of the, it's interesting because I've heard you describe a low point in your career as a leader was during your first maternity leave because obviously you were incredibly overjoyed at the birth of your first child. You were 37, you, you had a very difficult, long labor and you...
1:08:23 Guy Raz? You just decided that you were the CEO and the founder and that you didn't want to take a long leave, that you were back in the office pretty soon after the birth of your daughter.
1:08:32 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, that's a little bit of a hero complex there, right? You know, the business was doing well. I was still running the business at that point, but the business was doing well enough. But, you know, I mean, that's the thing about running a business. You get so much positive reinforcement, especially if you're the founder, owner, entrepreneur. You've done every job. You know all the answers. And then I suppose there's something about like, wow, a new mom, I don't know any answers. I think I'd rather go back to the place where I know answers. I mean, if, you know, you want me to get into sort of the psychological underpinnings of that choice. You know, I have this picture.
1:09:13 Speaker 01 It's like a Polaroid of Gilly. So she comes to the office with me.
1:09:18 Guy Raz? When she was a newborn?
1:09:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, really young. And she's all like swaddled and she's on one of those spinny chairs, like spinny roly chairs. And she's just lying there all swaddled up, like right on the chair. And there's no one around. I'm like, huh. But I think I needed to have that and realized like, wow, that's really, that's really screwed up. I gotta do better. But then I think now, when people talk about work-life balance, I think, you know, there's really no such thing as balance. If you want to do something really great, whether that's be a great mom, or be a great entrepreneur, or a great business person, you're really
1:10:03 Speaker 01 gonna have to dig in and have a lot of imbalance for a while. But it always has to flip back. We're gonna ride, there's gonna be a teeter totter.
1:10:13 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:10:14 Speaker 01 Sometimes it's gonna be, I am really digging in on work. And sometimes it's gonna be, I am really digging in on home. And then for those ordinary days, hopefully, I get home in time for dinner every day.
1:10:27 Guy Raz? I think around 2000, you started to design and manufacture your own stuff. How involved were you in the designs?
1:10:36 Speaker 01 I mean, what I would say about us is mostly what we are, and I think you have to be if you're going to be owned or operated, we are very opportunistic. So, the very first thing we ended up manufacturing ourself was a sports bra. And it was because I found a sports bra that someone else was selling, and it was kind of a passion project for her. She was maybe a yoga teacher, and she couldn't find a sports bra she liked. So, she made this one, and it ended up being a top-selling sports bra for us for many, many years. But at a certain point, she decided she was more interested in fitness instruction,
1:11:19 Speaker 01 understandably, than in making sports bras. So, she said, "Hey, I want to get out of this business. Would you like to buy the rights and designs for this?" We called it the Frog Bra. And I said, "Sure." And then she coached us up on how to get into the manufacturing business.
1:11:41 Guy Raz? Basically, in the 2000s, there was an absolute explosion in women's apparel brands. Lululemon, Athleta. Now, there's Outdoor Voices. Nike and Adidas are making this stuff. We had Chip Wilson on the show. We had Tyler Haney, Outdoor Voice, on the show before, a few years ago. You started this category. You were the lonely voice in the wilderness, saying, "Hey, there is a market for women's athletic wear, but these other brands, which started after you, became bigger very fast."
1:12:18 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:12:19 Guy Raz? Did that...
1:12:22 Guy Raz? How did you... What did you think about that? I mean, did you feel like you were under pressure to, like, compete and to grow faster? And to, I don't know, was it frustrating to not get the recognition that maybe you felt you guys deserved?
1:12:38 Speaker 01 So, kind of in the nicest way possible, what you're saying is, why'd you let all those late players come in and squash you like a bug?
1:12:45 Guy Raz? No, I'm not saying that, no.
1:12:47 Speaker 01 No, but it's spot on. It's spot on.
1:12:53 Speaker 01 So I played basketball in college and I have to tell you, I never played better basketball than when I was having to compete for a spot.
1:13:01 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:13:02 Speaker 01 So, I mean, I think that having more folks in the field makes, helps us all raise our game. At the same time, I'd say we're, in some ways, we're competing on the same game, but in other ways, we're not.
1:13:16 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:13:17 Speaker 01 And to be really honest, if Title Nine were a publicly traded company, someone should fire me right now. I mean, that, that's just the facts of it. They should fire me because the fact is, the sole purpose of a publicly traded company or a private equity backed company is to maximize shareholder value in purely financial terms. And plain and simple, I haven't done that. But I would say that at Title Nine, I have, I think we all have, always measured that, this idea of value creation, much more broadly. And I think my philosophy, and I think it's all of our philosophy now, can probably be summed up with one of my favorite sayings, not all things that count can be counted.
1:14:02 Guy Raz? Yeah. I mean, you built a business that didn't, that was bootstrapped, is bootstrapped. You never brought in outside investors, so you didn't have to make decisions that, that, you know, they wanted you to make. But there's a trade off, right?
1:14:18 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:14:19 Guy Raz? You don't, you don't explode, you don't go on the New York Stock Exchange, you don't, you're not a billionaire.
1:14:23 Speaker 01 Yeah. I mean, and I think it's, you know, when I think about that guy, I think about how this choice that we made and that we remake every day, is informed by our business practices. And it's everything from the suppliers we choose to who we choose to hire. I mean, probably at, in the most important way is that we have chosen to mentor up and coming female executives rather than some plug and play C-level.
1:14:52 Guy Raz? Right.
1:14:53 Speaker 01 You know, actually, I have to say, one of the things I'm still very proud of is that we grew the business from probably zero to about 50 million.
1:15:04 Speaker 01 With not one person that knew anything about retail or apparel or business at all. I mean, it's just like pure passion about women and the transformative power of sports. And, you know, we have this Pitch Fest that we do twice a year for up and coming women-run brands. I mean, I am filled up by seeing these women come in and grow their businesses. We share resources and, and sometimes even finances with these kinds of businesses. And, and, and we're all stronger and better for it. So it's just a different game.
1:15:41 Guy Raz? You, um, you've been quoted as saying that around 2014, the company had climbed out of a pretty, pretty significant downturn. And I'm assuming that that was probably connected to the recession. But you said that it was solely self-inflicted. And I wonder, I mean, it sounds like there were, you know, maybe some, maybe some personnel decisions or, or strategic decisions led to some rough years.
1:16:14 Speaker 01 Yes, very rough. You know,
1:16:18 Speaker 01 when I was a kid, my, something bad happened to somebody and a self-inflicted wound. And I'd talk to my mom about it. I'd say, well, it was their own fault. And my mom would say, well, those are the worst kind.
1:16:34 Speaker 01 I mean, and I would say that I have a lifetime of the worst kind of self-inflicted wounds.
1:16:42 Speaker 01 Some of the biggest mistakes are people mistakes. And mostly they are my own failures in leadership that negatively impacted team members or the whole team. And 2014, 15, while it had its share of people mistakes, I think it was really a failure on, on my part to recognize how quickly we needed to shift from a print and bricks and mortar model to a digital model.
1:17:10 Guy Raz? To like social media marketing and things like that, influencers and things like that.
1:17:14 Speaker 01 Exactly. All of that. And it's, you know, I mean, it's one of those things where, you know, if a company's been around a long time, it, it has a legacy.
1:17:22 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:17:23 Speaker 01 You know, and that's a great thing, but it's also a challenging thing. I couldn't figure out how to rebuild the organization around digital. And I think I set the team up for maybe the only time in the history of the company where we were not all playing off the same sheet of music. There were folks who were very committed to the print model.
1:17:48 Guy Raz? You were still a catalog, primarily a catalog company.
1:17:50 Speaker 01 Yes.
1:17:51 Guy Raz? And you can't, you can't be today.
1:17:53 Speaker 01 No, it's just too late. No, we, it's just, it's not happening. Don't get me wrong, print is an awesome secret weapon to have.
1:18:01 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:18:01 Speaker 01 They're, they're a part of your marketing mix, but in 2014, 2015, yikes. I mean, maybe they were 80% of the marketing mix. Now, when you consider our digital, you consider our retail, print's only 30% of the marketing mix.
1:18:19 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:18:19 Speaker 01 You know, so a dramatic change in six years. But I remember talking to Dana at one point and I was like, you know, I think, I think we're going to have to take out a mortgage on the house and I just need you to tell me that, that you're willing to go back to work.
1:18:35 Guy Raz? So you were, so you had really, like, the fortunes of the business had, had kind of reversed in a sense.
1:18:40 Speaker 01 Yeah, brutal.
1:18:41 Guy Raz? And, and, and it was, it was, so, so revenue, sales figures, everything was, was declining.
1:18:47 Speaker 01 Yep. Inventory, way too much inventory.
1:18:49 Guy Raz? And of course, that's going to create stress for everybody.
1:18:52 Speaker 01 Yep, yep. But in those moments, I mean, we have good people and I, I wish I could have been the coach that they needed me to be. And I, I think I'm, I'm getting better at it. I would say that the progress is slow, but I think, you know, the lessons that I have to learn now are the lessons of leadership more than they are entrepreneurship.
1:19:17 Guy Raz? Yeah. I guess tho- those sort of that, that, I don't want to say dark days, it sounds too dramatic, but the, kind of the downturn led you to eventually to, to bring on a new president of the company, Johnny Lynn, a man, and you had, for the most part, women executives. Was hiring Johnny. Did you have paused, did anybody have paused and say, wait, we're a women's apparel company? Is this the right fit?
1:19:45 Speaker 01 Oh, hell yeah. There was a hell of a lot of pause. Yeah, yeah, man.
1:19:51 Guy Raz? I was trying to be, I was trying to be gentle in the question, but yeah.
1:19:53 Speaker 01 Thank you for being gentle, but hell yeah.
1:19:58 Speaker 01 You know, sometimes the right woman for the job is a man.
1:20:03 Guy Raz? Right.
1:20:04 Speaker 01 And I think that Johnny Lynn, he was just what I feel like every time we have had a president leading the business, they have been exactly what we needed at the time they came in.
1:20:19 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:20:19 Speaker 01 We needed a diversity of ideas about how to run this business and Johnny is going to bring that to us and he is such a good leader and I felt confident knowing that I wasn't going to be leading the company on a daily basis, that the next person we needed to lead was someone who could build a great executive team.
1:20:40 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:20:41 Speaker 01 So they could lead long past when I'm here.
1:20:45 Guy Raz? You are a retail business. I think you have 14 or 15 stores.
1:20:52 Speaker 01 Yeah.
1:20:52 Guy Raz? And you kind of come out of this rough period and you're back to, you know, I think you hit a hundred million dollars and then COVID hits, which was absolutely devastating. Certainly initially for retail, you had to close all your stores. I think, I think store sales accounted for like 20% of your total business and that was it.
1:21:20 Speaker 01 Twenty to zero.
1:21:20 Guy Raz? Zero percent, twenty zero. And that's a lot of money. I read that you guys had six weeks of cash in the bank in 2020.
1:21:31 Speaker 01 So, sales drop like a rock. We're in the middle of what should have been our busiest season. We should have done about $10 million in sales and we lost $5 million of sales in the last two weeks of March alone.
1:21:49 Guy Raz? Wow.
1:21:50 Speaker 01 We had six weeks of cash on hand and then sales start to come back, maybe in August or September. Of course, we didn't recover the year. We ended up in negative territory, but I would say we made up a lot of ground on it. Now, we've probably worked our way up to about 85% e-comm and 15% retail, but a bigger number overall.
1:22:20 Guy Raz? I mean, Missy, you've been at this for 30-plus years. It's been, I know, incredibly fulfilling, but a grind. I mean, at some point, and I'm sure you've been approached in the past, but at some point, there will be a moment where somebody, you know, says, "Hey, we want to buy this," and you'll be in a position to decide whether to do that. When, I mean, what do you think? I mean, at some point, do you think you would entertain that?
1:22:53 Speaker 01 Well, Guy, you are asking me the question that the accountants and the lawyers have been asking me since day one. What is the exit strategy?
1:23:04 Guy Raz? Right, which you don't have to answer because it's your company.
1:23:07 Speaker 01 No, I think it's, I think I'm coming more to what the exit strategy is. As I, you know, I couldn't have answered it. It's important. It's absolutely incumbent upon me to be able to answer that question. If I want Title IX to outlast this generation of leaders, I need to be able to answer that question. And the thing that I know is that my goal is to get it in the hand of the next generation of female owner-operators. I do not need a liquidity event because of the way we have grown it. At this point, we have zero debt. We have zero outside investors.
1:23:48 Speaker 01 So it is a good spot for someone to come in and be able to earn a seat at the ownership table. And that is my hope, is that at some point, over the next 10 to 15 years, I'll be able to pass Title IX on to the next group of owner-operators, who I hope will do it a whole heck of a lot better than I have. So I am not thinking actively about.
1:24:18 Speaker 01 An exit strategy, I am thinking actively about leadership succession.
1:24:24 Guy Raz? Yeah, fair enough. Missy, could you ever have imagined when you started this in the garage in 89 as a 26, 27 year old, that 30 plus years on, it would look something like this? Was that, could you have envisioned that?
1:24:43 Speaker 01 Well, I want to say no, and I want to say maybe a little bit yes, in only the sort of frivolous way that a 20 year old might like, we need to start the women's version of Nike, you know? And then, once I got around to it, no, I don't think I ever could have envisioned what the work has become and the people, right, that I've gotten to work with. I'm not sure I really had expectations, to be honest. I was like, this is going to be a fun adventure. And I think that's really, when I think about business, it's the great game of business.
1:25:26 Guy Raz? Yeah.
1:25:26 Speaker 01 You know, we're not curing cancer, Guy. I mean, so it can, it can be fun. There can be times when it is hard and you take your losses, but it's a great game and it's been a great adventure. So I hope I have a few more adventures left in me.
1:25:43 Guy Raz? How much do you attribute your success to, to the work you put in, the really hard work you put in, and how much it has to do with luck? I mean, you had some lucky breaks early on, and I mean, of course, meeting Dana and Akai, who helped you kind of like learn about the bike business, and then, and then North Face, and meeting the right people at the right time, but also, obviously, there was a grind there, too. So how much of those things do you, would you attribute to the success of the business?
1:26:15 Speaker 01 Yeah, right. It's percentages. It's not binary. It's not all luck or all hard work. It's, it's percentages. And I think- You know, if you want to talk about the luckiest things that probably had sort of the absolutely necessary parts of it, I had to be a young woman, growing up in the seventies and eighties, not in the forties and fifties. That's luck. I probably had to grow up in a family that was encouraging me to be an entrepreneur, even though that might not be something young women in the South did at the time. That's luck. I had to grow up and not be battling abject poverty. Yeah.
1:26:56 Speaker 01 That's luck. So when you look at all those very lucky things, and then you add on to it, all of the things, the happenstance meetings and the people that offered me a hand up, I mean, I'd say it's 90% luck. But then, what I would say is the part that I can control is the 10% Yeah. that's work. And so it may only be 10%, but I'm going to work as hard as I can to control that 10%.
1:27:26 Guy Raz? That's Missy Park, founder and CEO of Title Nine. Back when we first recorded this episode in 2021, the company had just written the biggest check in its history, $1 million to the US Women's National Soccer Team. So they could pay their players more money and get them a little closer to what the male soccer players make. And this wasn't for a fancy sponsorship deal or anything like that. It was just a straight up gift.
1:27:52 Speaker 01 A straight pass through to the players. We're not asking, I don't want, and I said, like, I don't want to have a beer with the US Women's National Soccer Team. Honestly, this is
1:28:03 Guy Raz? I'm sure they would buy you a beer, though.
1:28:04 Speaker 01 They might buy me a beer.
1:28:06 Guy Raz? They buy me a beer.
1:28:07 Speaker 01 I do have a Budweiser beer glass with Megan Rapinoe on it. I think that'll do. So it's kind of like I'm having a beer with her.
1:28:17 Guy Raz? Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my newsletter at guyraz.com or on Substack. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Claire Murashima. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Elaine Coats, Iman Maani, John Isabella, Catherine Seifer, Kerry Thompson, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.
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