Men's Wearhouse: George Zimmer

In 1970, George Zimmer was a college graduate with no real job prospects and little direction. That's when his father, an executive at a boy's clothing company, asked him to go on an important business trip to Asia. It was that trip that propelled him into the world of men's apparel. In 1973, the first Men's Wearhouse opened in Houston with little fanfare. But by the mid-80s, George Zimmer managed to carve out a distinct niche in the market – a place where men could buy a good quality suit, at "everyday low prices," along with all the shirts, ties, socks, and shoes they need. With George as the face of the brand, Men's Wearhouse became a multi-billion dollar empire with hundreds of stores across the U. S. But then, in 2013, a bitter battle forced him to give it all up. PLUS in our postscript "How You Built That," we check back with two brothers from Guinea, West Africa who founded a company that makes Ginjan, a spicy-sweet juice from their childhood that mixes pineapple and ginger. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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

• 0:00Guy Raz?

  So really quick, before we start the show.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  I knew that something wasn't right. And the next day, they said that by unanimous consent, they decided to replace me. And George, we've put your furniture in storage. And I remember thinking, my furniture and my knickknacks, 40 years of stuff that I had accumulated in 50 cartons were put in storage. And in the moment, it felt like, well, damn, if all these people who are my friends don't want me as their leader anymore, then why do I want to be their leader?

• 0:49Guy Raz?

  From NPR, it's How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 1:01Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how George Zimmer turned discount suits into a multi-billion-dollar empire called Men's Warehouse and the bitter battle that forced him to give it up.

• 1:16Guy Raz?

  So in retail fashion, there are three main categories of customers. And obviously, this is a slight oversimplification, but it goes a little like this. There are products for the top end of the market, so think like a Birkin bag by Hermes. It costs around $20,000, and Hermes knows it's only going to sell a small number of them a year. You sell 500 Birkin bags a year, that's $10 million in revenue. And then there's the lower end, so Old Navy, for example. A huge number of consumers can afford to buy their clothes, and so they sell a lot of stuff: t-shirts, jeans, button downs for like 20 or 30 bucks apiece. And there is a clear strategy with each approach.

• 2:00Guy Raz?

  But where fashion brands can really hit the big time is in the middle range. So imagine a Venn diagram of a person who might pop into J. Crew or Madewell now and again, but also pick a few things up at Target. That is the customer most fashion brands are hoping to attract: the value shopper who's also discerning. And while this all might sound intuitive and obvious, that wasn't always the case. If you wanted a suit, for example, in the 1960s or 70s, you had to shell out a lot of cash or settle for something that looked and felt, well, cheap. And this was the insight George Zimmer had back in the early 70s, when he was a young suit salesman.

• 2:43Guy Raz?

  A good suit was out of range for a lot of men. And by the way, George also thought, with some justification, that men generally hated shopping for clothes. And when they did, they wanted to do it once, maybe twice in a year. So what if there were a place that solved this problem? A place where you could get a pretty solid suit at a good price, but also a place that made it super easy to get in and out fast? A place where, while you were trying on your suit, the salesperson would come back to the dressing room with a stack of handpicked button downs, ties, socks, and shoes to go with that suit? And a place that would do all the alterations on site?

• 3:27Guy Raz?

  This was the idea behind Men's Warehouse. And what started out as a single shop in Houston would eventually turn into a multi-billion dollar clothing empire with hundreds of stores across the US. George became the face of that empire. You probably remember those commercials of him back in the day. George would look at the camera and say, "You like the way you look, I guarantee it." But over time, his personality, his charisma, his vision, it created tension with the management and with the board. And as you will hear, they threw him out. And it was ugly, but we'll get there. George Zimmer grew up in Scarsdale in New York. His dad worked for a discount men's clothing company called Robert Hall.

• 4:12Guy Raz?

  So obviously, that had a huge influence on George. But it was his mom who really played an outsized role in his early life.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  My mother was a truly remarkable woman. And she had both amazing strengths and qualities that made us all proud. And then she had her own demons, many of them connected to having been an orphan, which does carry its own baggage. But what she did for me, which is something that I didn't appreciate when she was alive, but what she instilled in me was this notion that I was a special boy and I would be able to do anything I chose to do in life.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  And I must say, I've been a legend in my own mind for decades. And as I think we all know now, confidence is a positive quality.

• 5:18Guy Raz?

  And, I mean, you say your mom instilled this idea in you that you were special. Did you feel that when you were a kid? Was it something that because she said it, you started to believe that?

• 5:29Speaker 01

  The truth is that I did not. But I think that because of her consistency and the way she handled this issue, that it did enter my subconscious. And by the time I got to college, and certainly after college, I felt very confident about almost anything I tried.

• 5:52Guy Raz?

  So you, in 1966, you go off to college to Washington University in St. Louis. What do you remember about Washington University at the time? I mean, this is like the height of the free speech movement at Berkeley and student activism and the anti-war movement. And what was it like at Wash U?

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Well, it was fantastic. I've often felt that the time that you spend in college, if you're fortunate enough, can be the most positive years of your life. For me, I went to college as a sheltered young Jewish boy from New York. And because of what was going on in the streets, I became much more of a sophisticated and politically aware person.

• 6:49Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you're at Wash U studying economics, I think, right?

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:53Guy Raz?

  And meantime, back in Scarsdale, your dad's business making clothing, how was it doing?

• 7:01Speaker 01

  Well, when I went to college, his business was in its ascendancy. But he never really mastered the art of making a profit in business. Although he did make small profits, he never really, in my opinion, took advantage of what he might have been able to achieve.

• 7:25Guy Raz?

  What was, what was your dad making? What kind of clothes was he making?

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Inexpensive boys' outerwear, like what we called snorkel jackets. Out here, they would be called ski jackets, nylon shells.

• 7:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  He also made more of an upscale boys' raincoat. And when John John Kennedy was standing at his father's funeral in that famous photo where he salutes, he's wearing my father's raincoat.

• 7:58Guy Raz?

  Wow. Amazing. I mean, anyone listening can picture that image.

• 8:02Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 8:03Guy Raz?

  Um, presumably, he was manufacturing all this in and around Scarsdale. This is like the pre-make-your-stuff-in-China era.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Right. Well, he ended up, uh... Asking me in late 71, since I had not gotten a job of any note, I was substitute teaching. And my father, I think recognizing his son was in danger of drifting away to become a permanent hippie, said to me, why don't the two of us go to Asia? Because he wanted to look into manufacturing there instead of the greater New York area. And when I came back to New York to make that trip, he informed me that something had

• 8:53Speaker 01

  come up and he couldn't do it, but he wanted me to go in his stead, which I did. And really, that's the beginning of my business experience.

• 9:05Guy Raz?

  So 1971, he says, hey, I want to think about making my stuff in Asia. Can you go there? Where did you fly to?

• 9:13Speaker 01

  Well, I flew to Osaka was my first stop. And we get to what was known as Idlewild Airport back then.

• 9:22Guy Raz?

  Right, JFK.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Right. It was called Idlewild then. And it was Pan Am one, flying from New York through Fairbanks, Alaska to Tokyo.

• 9:36Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  And then I was switching and flying down to Osaka.

• 9:40Guy Raz?

  All right. So you fly from New York via Fairbanks in Tokyo, you get to Osaka. By the way, what are you, I mean, are you, you're 23 years old?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  Twenty-three.

• 9:52Guy Raz?

  And were you like presentable? Were you, you know?

• 9:56Speaker 01

  I was presentable. I told my father, when he told me he wasn't making the trip, that I didn't really understand his business well enough to do this on my own, at which he said. George, they're gonna love you in Asia because you're my eldest child. You're number one son. And they're gonna love the fact that you're doing this because I can't. So I would get up every morning at about five o'clock in the morning and start studying because I literally didn't know much about the manufacturing of clothing. And I would study from usually five to eight,

• 10:40Speaker 01

  including going to the breakfast restaurant in the hotels, which were quite glamorous. And he was right. A lot of people were very excited to talk to the number one son who had made such a long trip because his father couldn't make it.

• 11:02Guy Raz?

  And you were there on a fact finding mission, right? You were looking for potential factories to work with.

• 11:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, my job was to find factories, give them samples to make.

• 11:15Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  And then send them back to New York and be sort of the middle man.

• 11:20Guy Raz?

  Got it.

• 11:20Speaker 01

  And he was making the decisions. Of course, it was always about negotiating a price, the exact fabric. And I lived there for about six months.

• 11:31Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  I ended up settling in Hong Kong.

• 11:36Guy Raz?

  So did you find a factory that you decided this is the one that's gonna work?

• 11:40Speaker 01

  No, I did not. I found many factories that made samples, which I dutifully sent back to New York. But we didn't find any factory that we could make a deal with. And so after about six months, I came home. And when I got back to New York, it was the seventy-two presidential election. And I actually got a job in the McGovern campaign, working in Chicago in the summer of seventy-two in charge of what was called grassroots fundraising.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  And I remember I moved to Texas on Election Day, nineteen seventy-two.

• 12:26Guy Raz?

  Why?

• 12:27Speaker 01

  My father offered me a job in Dallas, repping his line in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana.

• 12:37Guy Raz?

  So you get back to the US, you work on the McGovern campaign for a brief stint.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:43Guy Raz?

  And then your dad sends you to Dallas to represent him and his clothing company.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 12:50Guy Raz?

  But why Dallas? What, I mean-

• 12:51Speaker 01

  Because the, uh, the rep he had there had quit.

• 12:55Guy Raz?

  So he had reps all over the country?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  He did.

• 12:57Guy Raz?

  And they were, what, they would, what would they do? Go to department stores or small shops?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  Go to department stores, specialty stores. By this time, he had a thriving business and, uh, he was doing well. And I thought it was an opportunity to continue my apparel career. And I liked living in Dallas. It was, uh, it was fun.

• 13:20Guy Raz?

  So you moved to Dallas in 72 and what? You start going, uh, making appointments and trying to, to say, hey, you know, this is the, we're making these raincoats and these jackets and, uh, you know?

• 13:32Speaker 01

  For six months.

• 13:33Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  I traveled the, uh, territory, Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana. And the largest account in my territory was in Houston, which is where I ultimately started Men's Warehouse.

• 13:47Guy Raz?

  What was the account?

• 13:48Speaker 01

  Called Foley's. It was a, uh, federated department store. And I went in and sold the boy's buyer some sport coats that were not, in my opinion, the correct sport coats he should have bought. But I was too new in the job to speak up and let him make the order because it was an order.

• 14:12Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  And then when they didn't sell, he told me that he knew my father was the owner and he'd like to return the coats. And I said, "Well, we don't take anything back." And he reminded me that I could pick up the phone and call my father and get it done, which I did. And we took back about 400 sport coats. And he promised that he would give me a large order going forward. And when I came in to get that order a few months later, he informed me that they were dropping me. So I had about a five hour drive from Houston back to Dallas.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  And I decided that they didn't really understand how to retail apparel, not only in Foley's, but throughout my territory. I didn't think that they understood the idea of discounting, which was really more in the Northeast and to some degree in Chicago, but had not gotten into the South. And so I decided to relocate from Dallas to Houston and open the first men's warehouse.

• 15:31Guy Raz?

  All right. Wait, well, let me, let me wind this back a little bit.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 15:34Guy Raz?

  Because it can't have been that quick. Or maybe it was. I, I'm trying to, I mean, you are your dad's rep in Dallas.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  For six months.

• 15:42Guy Raz?

  For six months. And you lose an account. And at some point you say, you know what? I want to open up my own place. How, how did that happen? How did that idea even come to you?

• 15:56Speaker 01

  I'll tell you the, having been a student activist in college and having been somebody that did not believe that capitalism was the end all be all to what we needed. I did not like the idea of having to execute, not just my father, but the sales manager's vision. I always wanted to be able to have my own dreams and to follow my own dreams. And so the reason I, the primary reason I opened Men's Warehouse

• 16:37Speaker 01

  was that, that it was a way for me to become my own boss and create my own destiny, follow my dreams.

• 16:48Guy Raz?

  Okay, so you are roughly 25. And what was-

• 16:52Speaker 01

  Younger.

• 16:53Guy Raz?

  Younger, okay. And before you even opened up Men's Warehouse, what was your idea? Why did you think that suits was the right thing to get into?

• 17:00Speaker 01

  Well, suits was what I knew.

• 17:03Guy Raz?

  But how was it that you knew suits? I mean, was, because I, my understanding is that your dad's primary business was making clothing for boys.

• 17:11Speaker 01

  He had expanded so that his product assortments were outerwear like snorkel jackets, these raincoats that had zip out linings that were fairly upscale. And then he started a line of inexpensive suits and sport coats.

• 17:32Guy Raz?

  Right. And did you wear suits yourself?

• 17:35Speaker 01

  I almost never wore a suit until I went to Hong Kong.

• 17:39Guy Raz?

  Hmm. And why did you think that Houston was the place to go?

• 17:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, I was living in Dallas and going to Houston every month. And the way I explain this is that Dallas was old money. Houston was new money. So that for a young upstart like myself, trying to create a business, the chances were much greater in Houston. And in fact, since I didn't really know anything about the retail business when I opened Men's Warehouse, the only reason that I was able to make it was because the city's growth was so extraordinary that it covered up for what I didn't understand.

• 18:26Guy Raz?

  Okay. So you decide you are going to open up a store that sells discount suits in Houston in 1973. Did you start the company by yourself or did you do it with somebody else?

• 18:41Speaker 01

  Well, no, I, the way I started it was Harry Levy had been my fraternity brother and was from Dallas. And I had called him up and said, would you like to move to Houston and do this with me? And he said, well, what's in it for me? And I said, well, I'll give you a third of the company for three grand.

• 19:05Guy Raz?

  Nice. And how did you guys get the money to open that first store?

• 19:09Speaker 01

  So I got my inventory from my father. He became my financial partner.

• 19:15Guy Raz?

  And the inventory wasn't suits. It was just slacks and shirts.

• 19:19Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 19:19Guy Raz?

  And jackets.

• 19:20Speaker 01

  That's right. And the way that worked was. That I had only $7,000 when this all began. And that basically went to first and last month's rent. So there was really no money as the company got ready to open. My father sent us several thousand suits and sport coats and slacks as well as 80 raw steel rolling racks, which is what we used for store fixtures in the first store.

• 19:59Guy Raz?

  How big was that place?

• 20:01Speaker 01

  It was 6,000 feet.

• 20:02Guy Raz?

  So, big place.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:04Guy Raz?

  Rent in Houston, was it cheap?

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Well, it was 3,500 a month.

• 20:08Guy Raz?

  Got it. All right. So, 1973, you and Harry opened the store, Men's Warehouse. How'd it go?

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Well, I remember the first Saturday we were open for business, we ran an ad in the Houston Chronicle and in the Houston Post. We were selling sport coats for $25, slacks for $10, and did not carry suits or shirts or ties or have tailoring. In fact, our first cash register was a mechanical, old-style NCR that you would push the buttons and it would come up in the window. No sale. I mean, that was how we started.

• 20:55Guy Raz?

  And was it a hit right away?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Well, we did 3,000 the first Saturday, and then Monday we did $60. And so, I would not say it was a success right away.

• 21:10Guy Raz?

  Wow, were you guys freaking out about that Monday?

• 21:12Speaker 01

  No, because my mother had always promised me that these things would work.

• 21:20Guy Raz?

  So you, you guys are running this place and it doesn't sound like it was, I mean, aside from that first day, it doesn't sound like you guys were really breaking the bank, you know, doing, you know, just crushing it in those first two years.

• 21:34Speaker 01

  We weren't, we lost money in each of the first two years and then we opened a second and a third store.

• 21:43Guy Raz?

  In Houston. But how, explain this to me, you're losing money on the first store, but you go and you decide to open a second and a third store, thinking that those will help you make more money?

• 21:57Speaker 01

  The marketing expenses in a major urban area are so high, you can't really run a single location. You need multiple locations.

• 22:09Guy Raz?

  When did you expand into jackets and to ties and suits and belts and things like that?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  We started to get into a broader product assortment in the mid to late 70s. We first went right to suits and we had a salesperson, he was the EVP for Hartschaffner and Marx, based in Chicago.

• 22:34Guy Raz?

  That was a what?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  They were America's largest clothing manufacturer and he came to see us and I said to him, they had the line Nino Sarudi and I said, we'd like to buy that line from you. And he said, forget about it. I sell Foles, I sell. And I said, well, let me tell you the whole story. We want to buy the line without the label, but we want a 20% discount.

• 23:05Guy Raz?

  So it would be a white labeled men's warehouse, Nino Sarudi suit, but you would put your label on it?

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 23:12Guy Raz?

  And he said?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  He said, why would I do that? And I said, you know, Kenny, why don't we play a game of basketball? And if I can beat you, you'll give me that deal. And if you beat me, I won't bother you again. The rest is history.

• 23:31Guy Raz?

  You beat him in the game.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  I beat him and we got Nino Sarudi suits, white labeled, but at a 20% purchase discount, which enabled us to sell them moderately profitably at $199 when everybody else in America was selling them at $299. That was the essence of the business.

• 23:57Guy Raz?

  So I guess there's a way for R. Chaffner and Marxer or any of the clothing manufacturers to sell more of their suits if they white labeled them, even if they were selling to at a lower price?

• 24:07Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 24:09Guy Raz?

  When did you first expand outside of Houston?

• 24:13Speaker 01

  In 1980, I came out to the Bay Area on a vacation and we were planning on opening up in Dallas as our next market. And I walk into either Rus Atkins or some other Bay Area store.

• 24:32Guy Raz?

  Department store.

• 24:33Speaker 01

  No, it was a men's.

• 24:34Guy Raz?

  Men's store, okay.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Clothing store. And there was not a regular priced 100% wool suit for under $300. And we were selling 100% wool suits for $199. So I went back to Houston and told my team that we could pick up Dallas later and we were going to go right to the Bay Area before things changed.

• 25:06Guy Raz?

  Where in the Bay Area?

• 25:08Speaker 01

  So we started in the South Bay. We opened in Mountain View, San Jose, Fremont, and then we had one store up in Concord.

• 25:21Guy Raz?

  So this is in the early 80s. The tech boom is really just beginning. Presumably, your customers were professional men?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yes, mostly professional men.

• 25:34Guy Raz?

  And you opened up there and what happened? Did people flock to it? Or was it kind of, again, you know, mixed results?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  I would say mixed results. We were not really successful until the mid 80s, in my opinion.

• 25:52Guy Raz?

  What happens in the mid 80s to make Men's Warehouse really successful?

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Well, we were put under duress. Our bank in Texas called our loan, and so we were put in a difficult position.

• 26:11Guy Raz?

  They called your loan because they were getting worried about you?

• 26:14Speaker 01

  No, it's a, in the early 80s, there was a general meltdown of all the banks in Texas. And every bank, including our bank, which was the largest bank down there, First City National, all of them were acquired by out-of-state banks.

• 26:34Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  So, we had to rethink our business model. So, I looked at our inventory, and by then it was on computer printouts. And I noticed that on about half of the inventory, there was a significant discrepancy between the ticketed price and the selling price.

• 26:58Guy Raz?

  Meaning, meaning what? It was, the selling price was much lower than what the ticket price was?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yes, because of promotional activities.

• 27:07Guy Raz?

  In other words, you'd have a sale, or?

• 27:09Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 27:10Guy Raz?

  And you had regular sales?

• 27:11Speaker 01

  We did. So, I made the decision to change the model and eliminate regular sales.

• 27:21Guy Raz?

  You, you decide, we need to stop holding sales.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:26Guy Raz?

  Lower our everyday prices.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:29Guy Raz?

  And basically, send out the message that we just, that we offer low everyday prices.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 27:35Guy Raz?

  When you made the decision, did you have a year of slow sales, two years?

• 27:41Speaker 01

  One year of slow sales.

• 27:43Guy Raz?

  I mean, it sounds like it was, you have a combination of a bank calling and your loan, really low margins. Sounds like this change in strategy was kind of a hail mary.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Well, I think the toughest part of this was trying to persuade people that I knew what I was doing, because they were questioning whether I knew what I was doing.

• 28:07Guy Raz?

  But how did you know that you knew what you were doing?

• 28:09Speaker 01

  I didn't. So to that degree, you could call it a Hail Mary. But I had been in the retail business for a while by then, and I had instincts that this made sense. It made no sense to me, this constant barrage of sales. It was though everybody in retail thought that the American consumer was stupid. And actually, they're not as stupid as those people thought.

• 28:44Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how George Zimmer's Hail Mary paid off in a big way, and the origins of that iconic slogan.

• 28:52Speaker 01

  You're gonna like the way you look, I guarantee it.

• 28:56Guy Raz?

  Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This from NPR.

• 29:10Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. So it's 1986, and Men's Warehouse is trying to pull out of an economic slump. George Zimmer has just changed the business model to focus on everyday low prices. And to get the message out, he decides to become the spokesperson. You know the commercials.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  At the Men's Warehouse, you get all three: service, quality, and a good price.

• 29:35Guy Raz?

  With George standing in front of what looks like a classroom.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  So what I did, because we had had training classes, which I would give a presentation to, I found I was very comfortable in those environments.

• 29:49Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  So I said, "Set up a fake training class, and bring in three cameras, and film me from different angles, and we will just bring in random office employees to ask me questions. I will answer them, and we will edit it into a good message."

• 30:10Guy Raz?

  Saying what?

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Saying that we've got great suits and sport coats, here's why, and oh, by the way, they're priced right.

• 30:20Guy Raz?

  Wow. And why did you think that would be compelling? I mean, that sounds like the most boring, dull commercial ever.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  I can only come back to my mother's words. It never occurred to me. And I could say this about two dozen things in my life that most people would say, "Didn't it occur to you that that might not work?" And I go, "Quite frankly, not really."

• 30:51Guy Raz?

  So at what point did you utter the very famous phrase?

• 30:56Speaker 01

  I think I uttered it in 86.

• 30:59Guy Raz?

  And how did that happen?

• 31:00Speaker 01

  It happened as an ad lib. And as I was ad-libbing the commercial, I'm having an inner dialogue with myself while I'm speaking. I didn't have much time since I was in a live recording. And all I could think of was, "I guarantee it." And the beauty of "I guarantee it" was not so much the words, because the words are as hackneyed as you're going to find. But when I started walking around in my regular life, people were saying to me, "Hey, George, I guarantee it."

• 31:41Speaker 01

  And I knew, A, that that was catching on. But I also have known something else, which is, as long as people are calling me George, I think the companies that I'm involved with will prosper. If they start to call me Mr. Zimmer, I'll be worried.

• 32:00Guy Raz?

  So you essentially, almost overnight, become like the mascot of Men's Warehouse.

• 32:06Speaker 01

  I did. And the benefit is that when you are a spokesperson for your own business, of course, you're doing it to affect the external world. You want more business. But what happens is that, and we were in a retail business with hundreds or thousands of employees, the workforce loves the fact that the boss is on TV.

• 32:35Guy Raz?

  I know him.

• 32:36Speaker 01

  I know George.

• 32:37Guy Raz?

  I know George, yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  And it was a great part of the company culture.

• 32:43Guy Raz?

  So by the late 80s, you are still in Houston and the South Bay?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  No, we're in, we have 15 stores in the Bay Area. We're in Seattle, Portland, Dallas, Sacramento, and Houston.

• 32:58Guy Raz?

  And Houston.

• 32:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:59Guy Raz?

  And what I'm still trying to figure out is, why didn't a bigger company try and undercut you? I mean, clearly, you've got this thing going where you're selling Nino Sarudi suits. It was probably an open secret that you were selling them for $100 less than a branded Nino Sarudi suit.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Without the label.

• 33:15Guy Raz?

  Without the label, but if this was an open secret, why wouldn't some other company come in and like Macy's or some big company and try to do the same thing?

• 33:22Speaker 01

  Well, I think that the answer is that many did. There were people that tried to mimic what we did. But, you know, part of it is, and I'm very proud of this, I did all the training originally at Men's, and I used to say to our employees, "Look, men look at going into a clothing store like going to the dentist's office." So their wife says to them, "I made you a dental appointment," and it's like the worst thing that the man can imagine. So they put off coming into a clothing store until they can no longer defer it any longer.

• 34:06Speaker 01

  And from that intuitive understanding, we developed what we called shirt stacking. So that when a man purchased a suit while he was in the dressing room, we would put together shirts, ties, belts, shoes, everything that would make the outfit really jump. Then we would present it to the customer. And we were not, in my mind, pushy, but we were not passive

• 34:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:39Speaker 01

  ... salespeople either. And the result was that our customers thought we had great service because they perceived this as service, and it drove a lot of revenue.

• 34:50Guy Raz?

  So basically, men, the thinking was, men don't want to spend a whole A whole lot of time shopping. They're generally buying stuff when they have to.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 34:57Guy Raz?

  They're gonna go in, they're gonna try on the suit and the pants. But while they're in the dressing room, we're gonna bring them like a pink shirt and a blue shirt and a white shirt. And we're gonna say, hey, these look great with the suit. Here's some great ties. And they would say, thank you for making it easy for me. I'm gonna buy it. I'll take it all. And they would walk out.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 35:14Guy Raz?

  Wow. So 1992, you guys go public, and I guess the IPO brings in, I read, like 13 million dollars?

• 35:22Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 35:23Guy Raz?

  I mean, it doesn't sound like a whole lot for an IPO.

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Well, I was never trying to amass the greatest fortune that I could. And it turns out to have been, I think, a very good decision. Because although we had an IPO that only raised 13 million, we then had four or five secondaries. Each secondary was at a higher value.

• 35:54Guy Raz?

  Secondary.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  Stock offering. They're kinda like IPOs.

• 36:00Guy Raz?

  I think the 1990s really was when you blow up, right?

• 36:03Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 36:03Guy Raz?

  You're riding a really strong economy. What else is going on? Why? I mean, because you now are going to cities all across the United States, right?

• 36:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:13Guy Raz?

  So what's going on that allows this expansion? Are consumer habits changing?

• 36:19Speaker 01

  No, I mean, first of all, with the money that we got from the IPO and secondaries, we started opening 50 stores a year, or a store every week. So if you can imagine, each store costs about a million dollars in inventory.

• 36:39Guy Raz?

  Wow. In cities all across the country.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Right. All 50 states.

• 36:44Guy Raz?

  You hit, I think, a billion dollars in revenue in 98. And then in the early 2000s, the expansion continues. 1999, you start to rent out tuxedos. How did that happen? And why?

• 36:58Speaker 01

  So we were at a training class. One of my regional managers had dinner with me and said, you know, George, I went into a few tuxedo stores. He was in Seattle. And he said, you know, this is exactly what we do. Fit people in clothing.

• 37:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:16Speaker 01

  Why don't we do this?

• 37:17Guy Raz?

  And you said?

• 37:18Speaker 01

  And I said, let's try. And he had 12 stores up there. And the first year, we did $1 million.

• 37:27Guy Raz?

  Wait, hold on. He opened like a mini tuxedo rental shop within the store?

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Inside the store.

• 37:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah, inside the store. They're just a cordon office section and it just said, "Tuxedo rentals here."

• 37:37Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 37:38Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Everybody in my organization hated this idea.

• 37:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah, why are you doing tuxedo rentals? We got suits.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Every time you screw up a wedding, you lose a customer. You know, this is not a way to build a clothing business.

• 37:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  So, we rolled it out into our stores, a third, a third, a third over three years. It took five years before the employees in the company stopped complaining to me about being in this business. And I used to say to everybody, and it was, it got to be redundant, where I would say, "Hey, look, this is going to take a while to develop, but when it does, it's going to be amazing."

• 38:26Guy Raz?

  Hmm. And I guess there was a point. I read that something like one out of five suits in America was purchased at Men's Warehouse?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 38:35Guy Raz?

  That is astounding.

• 38:36Speaker 01

  Astounding.

• 38:38Guy Raz?

  So, I want to fast forward to one particular chapter, because this is going forward to 2011. You step down as CEO of Men's Warehouse, and Doug Uer becomes the new CEO. And you picked Doug Uer, right?

• 38:52Speaker 01

  I did. I had been, you know, I didn't want to retire. And Doug had been my COO, and had been doing a great job. So, I said to him, "You know, Doug, our offices were next door." I said, "I'm not retiring. I'm going to come to work every day."

• 39:11Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  "But you're running things day to day, and I'd like you to get credit for that."

• 39:17Guy Raz?

  You then become what, chairman of the board?

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Well, I had been chairman.

• 39:21Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  I became executive chairman to indicate that I was still working.

• 39:25Guy Raz?

  Just a reality check. After you made that decision to step away from being CEO, did you really disengage? I mean, it was your company. You founded it. You started it. Did you really back away?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  I never told Doug what to do. After he was made CEO.

• 39:43Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 39:43Speaker 01

  I said to him, Doug, you're the CEO. It's your decision. You make it the way you see it.

• 39:51Guy Raz?

  Okay, now, this is a moment where I guess there begins to be considerable tension between you and the board.

• 39:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:57Guy Raz?

  What started to happen? What kind of sort of differences of opinion did you start to have with board members?

• 40:04Speaker 01

  I don't really know exactly what happened because as it got closer to my termination, I was cut out of more and more of the discussions that the board was having. But I'll give you a simple example. We owned a division called K and G. And K and G did 400 million. We had 100 stores. And it was a superstore in the sense that it was 25,000 feet. And it was men's and women's. And the price points were below men's warehouse.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  And I said to the board, K and G provides a unique opportunity for an offensive and defensive strategy. And they didn't quite understand what that meant. And so what it means is men's warehouse stores were able to raise the gross profit percentage by a full 10%, which is 1,000 basis points over a decade. Because K and G was protecting our opening price point position. And at the same time, because K and G was a significant national presence,

• 41:28Speaker 01

  it prevented other stores from realizing that investing in low-priced clothing, the way I had done in 73.

• 41:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:40Speaker 01

  Would make sense. So the board and Doug wanted to sell K and G. And I told them that I would support them in selling it, but I didn't agree with it. So it was that type of decision. And the board represented it in their public relations releases as though I was unwilling to cede authority. And I never. Understood what they were talking about because I was totally explicit in explaining to Doug that he was the guy.

• 42:17Guy Raz?

  All right, June 19th, 2013.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 42:22Guy Raz?

  You're fired from Men's Warehouse as the executive chairman.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:26Guy Raz?

  Thrown off the board. This is the company that you founded in Houston in 1973. What do you remember about hearing that news?

• 42:36Speaker 01

  Well, it wasn't that long ago, so I remember everything. I remember that the lead director, who I had put in the position, six foot seven, stood up, which made him quite intimidating, and said to me, you know, George, the board, by unanimous consent, and went on to talk about getting rid of me. But it, when he said unanimous consent, I'm in a room of friends.

• 43:05Guy Raz?

  People you knew.

• 43:06Speaker 01

  And I'm going, unanimous? I mean, I have Deepak Chopra as well as people that you don't know. And I can't believe that it is unanimous because I have done so many favors for all of these people.

• 43:23Guy Raz?

  He says by unanimous consent, we're asking you to step down?

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Um, well, at first, they said to me, we'd like you to become chairman emeritus. And I said, what is that? And they explained it. And it was a figurehead position.

• 43:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 43:39Speaker 01

  And I said, when do you need to know? And they said, by 10 o'clock. And the reason why was that we were meeting as a board in advance of a annual shareholder meeting. And so they wanted to get me off the prospectus as chairman of the board. And they said they could do it if I notified them by 10 o'clock that night. So we were in a hotel. So I was just by myself in a hotel.

• 44:07Guy Raz?

  Where?

• 44:08Speaker 01

  In Fremont.

• 44:11Speaker 01

  And I remember being in my room and thinking, you know, my lawyer was the company's lawyer. I had very few good friends outside of the business. I had nobody to really talk to.

• 44:27Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Deepak came up to my room that night and led me on a guided meditation because he was concerned that I wasn't taking into account my legacy. And he was right. I wasn't valuing my legacy. And what I was valuing was two things. Number one, I said, look, I know I told you that Doug would be a good replacement, but after a couple of years, I was wrong. He's not qualified to run the company. And that wasn't what Deepak wanted to hear. And so the next day, they said that, you know,

• 45:09Speaker 01

  by unanimous consent, they've decided to replace me. And they said to me, and George, we've put your furniture in storage. And I remember thinking, you've put my furniture in storage? I mean, my furniture and my knickknacks, 40 years of stuff that I had accumulated in 50 cartons were put in storage. And in the moment, it felt like, well, damn, if all these people who are my friends don't want me as their leader anymore, then why do I want to be their leader? Obviously, there's something not right here.

• 45:51Guy Raz?

  Were you hurt by your friends essentially rejecting you? Did you feel personally hurt?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  No, I did not. It was not a complete surprise. There had been a phone call about two weeks earlier where the compensation committee chairman had said to me, we're going to leave you in your position for the time being. And I remember thinking to myself, who the hell are you to tell me that? But I knew that there was something wasn't right.

• 46:25Guy Raz?

  But your entire life, your entire identity, everything you knew from the age of 23, 24,

• 46:35Guy Raz?

  Was Men's Warehouse.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:36Guy Raz?

  How could you not have been hurt by being ousted?

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Well, I've, and this may not be a satisfactory answer, but I don't get hurt the way you mean it. I did not get depressed. I did not go into this, "Poor me, and I'm a victim."

• 46:54Guy Raz?

  But, I mean, I get it that you didn't feel sorry for yourself or that stuff, but like, it's your identity, and then one day you've got it, you've got an office to go to, there are people you know, there are people you see, or George, or I guarantee it, and then the next day you don't have that. That's a big deal.

• 47:13Speaker 01

  I'm completely comfortable in my skin almost all the time. People are interested in what I have to say, and I feel I have a lot of respect from people I care about. I see what happened at Men's as really an example of capitalism run amok.

• 47:38Guy Raz?

  Do you still keep in touch with any of those former board members?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Not a one.

• 47:42Guy Raz?

  So, so, so to say you didn't take it personally is not really true.

• 47:47Speaker 01

  Oh, well, if, I feel that I'm a great friend. And so, when you hurt me, the only way I have to get even is to withhold my friendship and say, "That's it. We're no longer friends, and I no longer want to speak to you."

• 48:07Guy Raz?

  That's a normal human reaction.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Now, it could be that, you know, under some sort of therapy, it would be discovered that I am really quite hurt, but I don't feel hurt. I, I got divorced after this happened, for the second time. I have a great relationship with my children. I'm, you know, watching politics in the evenings, but I don't feel... I don't know. I think being hurt is very close to feeling like a victim. And I just reject that.

• 48:50Guy Raz?

  Okay, so after you left, it cleared the way for Men's Warehouse to make a couple of significant decisions, including acquiring Joseph A. Bank for $1.8 billion. It turned out to be a bad decision.

• 49:03Speaker 01

  Yes. And the reason is because Men's Warehouse thought that the Joe Bank customer and the Men's Warehouse customer were different because of shirt stacking. We were more aggressive in the selling process. When you walk into a Joseph Bank, they leave you alone to browse. And what I found was that you do a lot less business with that strategy than if you have a knowledgeable consultant who is genuinely interested in helping the customer in whatever

• 49:48Speaker 01

  the customer's lifestyle is.

• 49:50Guy Raz?

  The company is, how would you describe the company today from the outside?

• 49:54Speaker 01

  Struggling.

• 49:55Guy Raz?

  Do you own any shares anymore?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  A few, yeah.

• 49:58Guy Raz?

  And do you feel a sense of satisfaction that they are struggling since your departure?

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Yes, and my new business is, although we're very small relative to them, we are competitors.

• 50:11Guy Raz?

  So I wanted to talk about your new business a sec, but you leave Men's Warehouse, you're rich, you can do whatever you want, you can go to Hawaii, you can hang out with your kids, whatever you want to do.

• 50:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:25Guy Raz?

  Did you think about that, doing that for some time?

• 50:27Speaker 01

  I tried for four months. I sat in my backyard in Piedmont, beautiful, flowers. It was the summer. And I thought, gee, this is dull and boring. My kids are in school, my wife's got her own life, and I'm sitting in my backyard looking at the flowers. Didn't make sense.

• 50:50Guy Raz?

  So I guess, pretty soon after this, you come up with an idea for a new business, which was an online tuxedo rental company called Generation Tux.

• 50:58Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:59Guy Raz?

  And you launched this in, I think, what, September of 2015?

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:04Guy Raz?

  And when the people from Men's Warehouse found out about it, what did they think?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 51:11Guy Raz?

  Was there like a cease and desist letter? Was there anything like, I guess you didn't sign anything, because you, right, you didn't pledge.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Right, they just threw me out.

• 51:18Guy Raz?

  You didn't pledge not to.

• 51:18Speaker 01

  If I tell you, you know, what Men's has done, Men's is afraid of me, is what it must be. Because after I was fired, the first thing I tried to do was buy K&G from Men's.

• 51:32Guy Raz?

  Which was that retail company that they owned. You tried to buy it from them.

• 51:36Speaker 01

  For $90 million.

• 51:37Guy Raz?

  Okay.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Well, at first, they wouldn't sell it to me at all. Then they said, all right, if you give us a four-year non-solicitation. And I said, what do you mean by that? And they said, you can't hire our employees for four years. And I said, are you kidding? I'll give you two years. But four years is an eternity. Deal never happened. To this day, they still can't find anybody that would offer them half of what I was going to pay them. Then I had a relationship with Macy's, and we were going to provide Macy's with

• 52:21Speaker 01

  the tailoring for their online business, not their stores, their online business. And as a lark, I asked my local guy if they would have any interest in doing a tuxedo rental thing with us.

• 52:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  And within a few months, my team and I were in New York, in Terry Lundgren's office, the CEO of Macy's, making a deal to be the.

• 52:55Guy Raz?

  Tuxedo.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  Tuxedo rental. And we had the deal. It went to legal review. And while it was in legal review, Men's Warehouse stole it.

• 53:08Speaker 01

  Because I could not get Macy's to agree to a no shop clause.

• 53:13Guy Raz?

  Uh huh.

• 53:14Speaker 01

  So they-

• 53:14Guy Raz?

  They shopped it around.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  I don't know how it happened, but the next thing I know, Terry called me and said, "I'm very sorry, George, but we're not doing it."

• 53:23Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  And I said, "Who are you doing it with?" And he said, uh, he didn't want to tell me at first. And then he said, "Men's Warehouse." And I went, "You gotta be kidding me."

• 53:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 53:35Speaker 01

  And, um, it doesn't make me, uh, vengeful or revengeful. It, it just makes me more determined to do what I know how to do.

• 53:50Guy Raz?

  What is a status of generation tux now? I mean, you started in 2015.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  This will be our first year of profitability.

• 53:56Guy Raz?

  Okay, so it started out, it took a long time for Men's Warehouse to get to, well, to really get to major profitability.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, this is much better.

• 54:04Guy Raz?

  And, uh, you go online and you get a tux and you just put your measurements in and it comes to you and then you wear it and you send it back?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Exactly. And we do things like, if you want a, uh, free home try-on, we'll do not only one, two free home try-ons. We do free swatches. You know, we do a lot of things that make our business, uh, strong and it's, right now, it's starting to really fire on all cylinders.

• 54:34Guy Raz?

  George, do you feel a sense of, I don't know, vindication that you were right about certain things? Certainly you were wrong about certain things. Everyone's wrong over the course of their career, but I guess you were right in, in certain ways. You, you did not want Men's Warehouse to acquire Joseph A. Bank. You didn't like that model. They did. It hurt them. Uh, does being right, is that important to you?

• 55:01Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 55:02Guy Raz?

  Why?

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Well, I like to think that I'm right about many things and wrong about a few things. But, uh, yeah, I think that, uh, you know, that there is a, uh, a real problem in America. I think that capitalism, which clearly won the, uh, battle over communism and even socialism, is need in need of modification. And I'm a capitalist, what the hell? I've spent my life making money, but there are a few adjustments to capitalism that would make it sustainable, which unfortunately, I don't think it is sustainable.

• 55:44Guy Raz?

  Would one of those adjustments be shifting the focus away from shareholders?

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. That's what it's about.

• 55:51Guy Raz?

  Because it's always about short-term profit.

• 55:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:53Guy Raz?

  George, when you, when you look over the course of your career, uh, the ups and downs, how much of your success do you attribute to your hard work and your intelligence and skill? And how much do you attribute to luck? Just being lucky, riding a lucky wave?

• 56:10Speaker 01

  Well, I think they go hand in hand. In other words, I think you need luck, but you also need the talent and the, uh, intelligence to know how to take advantage of luck. I think that what happens in life, unfortunately, is a lot of people have the opportunity to be lucky, but don't know how to take advantage of it.

• 56:39Guy Raz?

  And you did.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  And I did.

• 56:41Guy Raz?

  That's George Zimmer, founder and former CEO of Men's Warehouse. Today, George still runs Generation Talks. At some point, I'm gonna make you say it. You know that, right?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  I'll say it right now. You're gonna like the way you look. I guarantee it.

• 57:00Guy Raz?

  I think I'm gonna put that as my phone ringer.

• 57:03Speaker 01

  When I was, uh, at Men's Warehouse, I would go to, uh, charity auctions and auction off doing that for $3,500.

• 57:17Guy Raz?

  Wow. Nice.

• 57:19Speaker 01

  I would do it for you for nothing, by the way, so...

• 57:22Guy Raz?

  Thank you very much.

• 57:28Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for How You Built That. And today, we're updating a story we first ran about a year ago. It begins around 1993 in Guinea, West Africa, where Raheem Jalloh was growing up. And one of the things Raheem loved as a kid was this sweet, gingery pineapple juice called Ginjan, which is a really popular drink in that part of the world.

• 57:52Speaker 02

  You know, you go buy snacks on the side of the road, you often have, you know, women that have a little cooler of Ginjan that they sell along with it. There's essentially, to us, this is like lemonade or iced tea here, or maybe milk to a lot of the kids.

• 58:06Guy Raz?

  Raheem's early childhood in Guinea was pretty great. But around the time he turned 15, the political situation in the country became unstable and unsafe. So Raheem's parents sent him and his brother to the US. But Raheem overstayed his visa and was eventually caught by immigration officials. And he ended up spending almost a year in detention.

• 58:30Speaker 02

  Honestly, looking back at it, it's now that I appreciate how difficult of a time it was. I guess I was a little young and too naive to understand how much trouble I was in.

• 58:41Guy Raz?

  Raheem was eventually able to get a green card and then made enough money to go to community college and then to Michigan State University. But the whole time, he was missing home. His mom, his friends, and even that pineapple drink he loved as a kid.

• 58:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, in Michigan, when I'm playing sports, when I'm running around in a really hot summer, I usually don't pine for Coke. I think about Ginjan.

• 59:08Guy Raz?

  Now, you can find homemade pineapple ginger juice at some African restaurants, but you can't just walk into a chain store and buy it off the shelf. So Raheem and his brother thought, hey, maybe we should start making it and selling it. And when they started doing research, the timing seemed perfect.

• 59:27Speaker 02

  We noticed that the traditional, the Cokes, the Pepsis, all these other carbonated, artificially flavored brands have been losing market share to a point where they have all started to buy up smaller companies that are developing fresh, organic products.

• 59:44Guy Raz?

  OK, so a great opportunity for something like Ginjan, but as much as they love the stuff... They did not know how to make it. So they called up their mom in Guinea and asked for her recipe.

• 59:57Speaker 02

  Fresh ginger, cold-pressed pineapples, fresh lemon juice, vanilla, anise.

• 1:00:03Guy Raz?

  Anyway, this is all happening around 2014. And at this point, the two brothers are living in New York City. They start mixing up batches of Jinjan in Mohamed's apartment. And Rahim starts to give out samples to customers at the bar where he works.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  They'll try. Some folks would find the ginger to be too spicy. Or some folks would find it to have a little too much lemon, or too little lemon, or the pineapple is not pronounced enough, or it is.

• 1:00:28Guy Raz?

  Eight months later, after trial and error, Rahim and Mohamed get the recipe exactly where they want it. And they decide to launch Jinjan at an African festival in Harlem.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  It was one of those moments where you realize that we're really onto something. Everyone that came by that was from West Africa that knew the product could not just buy one bottle, you know? They'd buy two, three, take a picture, send it to a friend.

• 1:00:53Guy Raz?

  They sold out all of their bottles. And then, a really big break. They won $25,000 in a competition for budding entrepreneurs. So they moved into an industrial kitchen. And eventually, they pitched Jinjan to Whole Foods. And well.

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  We were definitely relentless in terms of showing them. Because we knew Whole Foods wanted us to get a distributor. And their distributor was interested in us because they know we're talking to Whole Foods. So we kind of played them against one another. And it worked out well.

• 1:01:27Guy Raz?

  Since launching in 2015, Jinjan has made it into every Whole Foods in New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County. And Rahim and his brother are looking forward to opening their first Jinjan café in Harlem this summer. If you want to find out more about Rahim Jalloh or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, howibuiltthis.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org.

• 1:01:56Guy Raz?

  And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at [email protected]. And if you want to send a tweet, it's at howibuiltthis. Our show was produced this week by Deepa Motasham with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. Thanks also to Julia Carney, J.C. Howard, Norah Kutsi, Neve Grant, Melissa Gray, Sanaz Meshkhanpour, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is Candace Lim. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.

• 1:02:37Guy Raz?

  This is NPR.

• 1:02:44Speaker 03

  There are millions of books out there just waiting for you. But how to keep up? Introducing NPR's Book of the Day. Every weekday, we feature some of our favorite conversations with authors and writers about their latest books. You can check it out in about the time it takes to walk the dog. Happy reading.