Zumiez: Tom Campion

Working as a manager for nine years at JCPenney, Tom Campion learned a critical lesson about how to succeed in retail: you have to keep close track of inventory. Tom’s experience navigating the ebb and flow of style, color, and size—all without the benefit of computers—gave him the confidence to launch his own retail business, aimed at teenagers. In 1978, he and his partner Gary Haakenson opened their first store, Above the Belt, in Seattle, and soon tapped into the hot new “action sports” category and the growing popularity of surf, skateboard, and snowboard culture. Tom placed his stores in shopping malls, and created spaces where teenagers would want to hang out, by leaning into “organized chaos” as a design principle. Today, with roughly 750 stores, Zumiez is the largest action sports retailer in the world. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 1:32Guy Raz?

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• 4:23Guy Raz?

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• 5:12Speaker 01

  We were doing all right, but it was important to get your inventory right. So many retailers, they fall in love with their goods.

• 5:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:20Speaker 01

  And I always say, you're never married to your goods. Doesn't work, got to mark it down. You got to turn it. You got to get cash back and buy something that a customer wants.

• 5:29Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  But then taking the risk. You're going to buy 100 or you're going to buy 1,000? A lot of people don't have the ability to do that, to see that. I mean, it's old school.

• 5:44Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 5:58Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Tom Campion saw a major market opportunity in the culture of skating and snowboarding and built Zumiez, the biggest action sports retailer in the world.

• 6:15Guy Raz?

  I bet you know of a really cool store that, for one reason or another, just didn't survive. There was an awesome kitchen store here in Northern California that went out of business not so long ago, and it's kind of hard to know why. It was beautifully curated. The store had things no one else carried, and the prices were totally reasonable. But for some reason, it just didn't work. Now, this happens to really good stores every day. And part of it is the uncertainty of retail. There is so much you just can't predict. But there's one thing, one business fundamental, that might actually give you a fighting chance. And it's not a flashy social media campaign or a buzzy redesign.

• 7:01Guy Raz?

  It's actually something a lot less sexy. But it's the thing that enabled Tom Campion to build Zumiez. And Tom's formula, it basically boils down to managing inventory. Being obsessive about keeping track of what you have, what you need, and what you think your customers will want next. Zumiez, if you're not familiar, is the world's largest action sports retailer. So think apparel and gear centering around skating and snowboarding culture. The brand has around 750 stores in North America, Europe, and Australia. And in 2021, they reported over $1 billion in revenue. Tom founded the precursor to Zumiez in 1978

• 7:45Guy Raz?

  with his friend Gary Hawkinson. Before that, Tom and Gary both worked at JCPenney in Seattle. And that was where Tom learned about the nuts and bolts of retail. And, as I mentioned, how to keep a business profitable by making sure you manage the inventory carefully. Zumiez started out as a teenage-oriented apparel store called Above the Belt. But in the 1980s, Tom started to notice that teenage boys, particularly in Southern California, were wearing surf and skater brands, brands like OP, Gotcha, Billabong, Santa Cruz, and Quicksilver. And Tom had a hunch that surf and skate, and eventually, snowboard culture, would have a lasting appeal. And he quickly built a culture at Zumiez

• 8:30Guy Raz?

  to capitalize on that appeal. Tom grew up in the 1950s and 60s in Seattle in a working class home. His dad was a mail carrier and his mom stayed at home to raise the kids. And while Tom was still in college at Seattle University, he got an early start in retail.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  I'm working in grocery stores and I'm loving it. It was my first taste of retail, even though I was a paper boy for like, I think, four or five years. And the grocery store business, you're running five ways from Sunday. People are buying stuff from you. I just love, I love the energy, the action. I loved interacting with people. Pretty soon, I'm, this is pre-computer, I'm buying for a lot of stores. I'm good at math and, you know, managing inventory and stuff like that. Not managing the store by any means, just really solid worker guy, right? And doing this, and I really enjoyed this. And I'm working about 25 hours a week, 30 hours a week. Some weeks I'm paying my own tuition.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  And I graduated in June, and I can't remember exactly how this happened, but I applied at JCPenney. It was retail and Penny's was great training program, all that stuff. And I was hired, I think, right before Christmas that year.

• 9:45Guy Raz?

  They had presumably like a graduate training program to, I guess, get college graduates into their management program.

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Couple of years, year and a half, two-year training program on college graduate and management.

• 9:57Guy Raz?

  And JCPenney's, at the time, it was a really important, I mean, 1970, you're talking about, you know, JCPenney's was competing with Sears.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Yeah. And the high end was the Bon Marche here. So it was, it was a major department store. And the funny thing is, anybody that knows me, you know, you're wearing a suit. So I had three or four suits with a white shirt, blue shirt, gray tie, and you're walking around. And eventually, after a year and a half, two-year program, I stayed in that store. They made me manager of the men's department in like 1971.

• 10:30Guy Raz?

  Wow. This is the, this is the JCPenney at the Northgate Mall in Seattle.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:36Guy Raz?

  It was probably a bustling, huge place, right?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's big volume. I can't remember how much it did. I was good at it.

• 10:43Guy Raz?

  So, but you had, you had inventory sent to the stores. They were corporate buyers. So you weren't really deciding what was being sold, right?

• 10:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wasn't totally in control of my own destiny. And I'd always gotten a problem with inventory because the buy, he would be buying part of it, he or she, on a system that wasn't computerized, right? You didn't, you didn't know exactly where everything was and it had to be written down. So Pennies in the seventies, we were still in the evolution. It was high inflation, but that's where a lot of America shopped.

• 11:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  They'd come in, they'd get their auto fixed, buy a set of tires. The toy department, one year was yo-yos and they still buy yardage. And you had the white sale, you know, white sale at Pennies was intimate apparel and then domestics, curtains and pillows and pillowcases. And you could measure how the economy was doing during the white sale when customers, usually women, come in and they stock up.

• 11:42Guy Raz?

  So Tom, you are a young man and a young father, right? I think you got married pretty, at a pretty young age.

• 11:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was married at, first time at 21. I've been married twice, you know. And my daughter came along in 74, Amy, and my son in 78, right before I left for Zoomies.

• 12:00Guy Raz?

  All right, so you are at Pennies. And there's a guy there named Gary Haakenson or Hackinson, who's also working there.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  Yep, Gary Haakenson. He's, I think he's my age, a year older, was in the training program. And yep, we went through the highs and the lows of managing.

• 12:16Guy Raz?

  Where was he working at Pennies?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  Northgate.

• 12:19Guy Raz?

  All right, so you meet Gary, and Gary is important because the two of you would eventually go and start a business together. But do you remember ever talking to Gary? Would you ever sort of, I don't know, lunch breaks or, I don't know, and say, you know, we should do something, Gary? Do you remember having those conversations?

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Well, usually around lunch or you go, jump in your car, you go to the McDonald's drive-in or whatever, or go into the Denny's store. You were the highs and lows of any business, right? Oh yeah, God, that guy's busting my chops or whatever. And you get to know each other. I knew he was competent and I think he believed I was competent. And we said, eventually, as, it was always a pressure on how much money you made and you, he had to. Small kids too that about my kids age. So he was raising kids in the seventies, just like I was. And, you know, it was like, are we getting rewarded for what the work we're putting in here? And, and he grew up in the Northwest too. So I, you know, I don't think he really wanted to,

• 13:18Speaker 01

  to move to LA or New York or to other places to go up in the Pennies Corporation.

• 13:23Guy Raz?

  All right. So the two of you are working there and you, you end up staying there for like seven years, I think.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  I was there from seventy, seventy eight, so nine years.

• 13:31Guy Raz?

  Nine years. Wow. So.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Eight and a half.

• 13:33Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I'm wondering, I mean, here you are, you know, eight years into your time at JC Penney's. You've invested a lot in learning about the company and growing there. And clearly you were on the, on track to manage your own store at some point.

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Maybe.

• 13:47Guy Raz?

  What, but what made you think, let me leave this stable opportunity and, and do something a little risky and start my own store? Like what, what, what was it that got you thinking like that?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  Where I was getting the training, I just didn't like how it looked and how they managed without writing a management plan down guy. I mean, how you treat people, how you empower people, how you recognize people.

• 14:12Guy Raz?

  They didn't do that.

• 14:13Speaker 01

  They didn't do that. Not as much. It was always, oh my God, what is the manager going to think? And the manager told me what he thought. Put your suit on and look like you're in management. And up to that point, you know, it wasn't like we came out of the blue and we were, you know, I don't know, school teachers and said, okay, let's open up a teenage clothing store.

• 14:32Guy Raz?

  You had experience.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  I had five years in grocery business and by the time we did this, nine, so like 14 years.

• 14:38Guy Raz?

  So you had this idea to open a store that would basically appeal to like teenage boys, more or less, right?

• 14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was called, wasn't called Zoomies and it was called Above the Belt. And, you know, we both had experience in men's department, even though at that point I wasn't managing that. And we, you know, and then you looked at the market. What didn't the market have? And you knew what was going on and especially in young men's teenage, because that's where it flips. I mean, you don't go in to sell them blue suits because blue suits don't flip.

• 15:06Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  But, you know, teenage brands flip all the time.

• 15:10Guy Raz?

  When you say flip, you sell a lot of inventory.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, or the brand changes.

• 15:14Guy Raz?

  Changes, I got you.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  It means if you can get in front of that. You're going to attract a customer. And that's all about managing your inventory because that puts you out real quick.

• 15:24Guy Raz?

  And that was the secret for you. Like you figured out that if you could understand how to manage inventory, you could probably run a stable business and maybe even a great business.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And but we had that training which appealed to Northgate Mall. I forget who owned it and they gave us a shot.

• 15:43Guy Raz?

  All right. So this, so you, so you and Gary decide to launch a store called Above the Belt. And let me, before you, you even opened it, sort of help me understand how you did that. Because you, both of you were sales managers at a JCPenney store. And so I have to assume you did not have a lot of capital, a lot of cash on hand. So how did you, I mean, you had to rent.

• 16:06Speaker 01

  So I'll, I'll walk you through it. We went to the bank. It was Seattle First or something. It was eventually bought out by B of A. And we had done, you know, the cost of building the store, what it was. We did some of ourself. We hired a couple of guys to build it out. But the biggest expense was, was inventory against getting it open, starting to get cash, you know, sales coming back in. And what we needed was, total was about 45 grand, which sounds preposterous. But this is 44 years ago.

• 16:37Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  But like any bank, you guys got to be frigging kidding me. And I'm using frigging, you know, as the clean word. But we, we ended up with an SBA guaranteed loan. So the bank is just filling out the documents and making points. And the money comes from government. That's a great program.

• 16:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 01

  And as you know, I do, I do a lot, a lot of political stuff. And I say, hey, I got started on SBA.

• 17:01Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  And now I employ 10, 11,000 people, Gen Z, because of an SBA loan. We each put in five grand and we borrowed 35 grand, something, something like that.

• 17:12Guy Raz?

  So that was a massive amount of money in 1978 to borrow.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  We really wanted to leave pennies.

• 17:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Biggest thing was interest rates. You know, everybody talks today, oh, interest rates are going up. Oh, my God, they're 4% to 5%.

• 17:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah, right.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  We borrowed it for the first four or five years as, as we grew. I think we were paying 16, 17, 18%.

• 17:32Guy Raz?

  Right, people forget that. That the interest rates in the 70s and early 80s were like 15%.

• 17:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:39Guy Raz?

  All right, so you and Gary have this concept, because you have experience, to open a store. And I think it wasn't just for men, it was for young people, basically, clothing for young people. So you decide to open the store at the Northgate Mall, where the Pennies was. And I guess, I mean, in the 70s, 80s, 90s, that was where to be, in the mall, right? You wouldn't have opened it in downtown.

• 17:58Speaker 01

  That was where to be. There were stores downtown, but the action after World War II is to the malls.

• 18:06Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  And we're in 600 malls today. It still is for our customer.

• 18:10Guy Raz?

  I'm curious, I mean, I'm looking at a photograph of you, and I think it's you and Gary, in front of an Above the Belt store in the late 70s. And it's a really cool, it's got a really cool design, like, the exterior has like these really nice, like, wood, this beautiful, like, sort of Pacific Northwest wood, like blond wood look. And who was the sort of the person who picked the clothing, or picked the design? Or did you and Gary do that together? How did you come up with that look? And even the clothing that you would select and curate for the store?

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Well, you'd figure out what was on the mall, you'd figure out what was in the market, you'd figure out what was not suitably represented on the mall. And then you had to take the risk. Sooner or later, you gotta spend that money and buy it.

• 18:56Guy Raz?

  How would you figure it out? Would you, like, how would you know?

• 18:59Speaker 01

  So there were, there was a famous clothing show then, called Magic, that used to happen in LA, then it went to Vegas. And we started going to that.

• 19:09Guy Raz?

  To the trade show, right.

• 19:10Speaker 01

  Oh, the trade show. And, you know, it's less of that now, and it became an action sports show later on. We'll get into that. But you go to the show, and, you know, it's like 100,000 people, and you go, holy shit. You know, how am I gonna figure this out? But you did, because you had the training, you could see, and you knew people, and you talked.

• 19:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 19:30Speaker 01

  You communicated all the time. You know, and reps, the reps work remotely. It isn't probably as centralized as it is now at Brand. So they're out, they're trying to find new places to sell their goods, and we could sell.

• 19:45Guy Raz?

  In the early days, was it just you and Gary working the store?

• 19:48Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Well, we, even in the early days, you know, we both had families and we'd split it up, work nights, work days, weekends, but we had, I think, three other employees, two or three other employees. And, you know, we hired people that could sell. We knew how to staff, too. We knew how to schedule staffing, right? When the busy time was, because we worked at Penny's.

• 20:10Guy Raz?

  What do you remember when you and Gary were like, talk about this, this business above the belt? Do you remember having really ambitious plans to make this huge? Or did you think it was going to be a one-off store?

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Neither. You know, we achieved our first goal. We got out of Penny's. And we were doing all right, enough that we're comparable to what we're making at Penny's. So, and, and you're doing it all on your own.

• 20:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  You're winning or losing, you're achieving, you're driving a comp, all on your own. And you go, there's nothing more satisfying than I did that. I mean, I did that, you know? And it just felt right.

• 20:48Guy Raz?

  And in retail, when you say you're driving comps, it means that you are increasing the sales year over year in a...

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Year over year without, you know, in Zumiez, you know, it'd be year over year in existing stores, not counting new stores.

• 21:02Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  But it was important to get your inventory right.

• 21:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  And to take the markdown when it wasn't, to know when to do that. So many retailers, they, they fall in love with their goods. And I always, as I say, you're never married to your goods. Doesn't work, got to mark it down, you got to turn it, you got to get cash back and buy something that a customer wants. I mean, it's old school. You know, we use different metrics now and computers and looking at categories and sizes and open to buy, and it's in the... Tens and hundreds of millions of bucks, but it's kind of the same thing.

• 21:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah. I, I'm totally fascinated with, I mean, it's, the, the reality is like, the boring stuff of like managing schedules, making sure like, you know, you know where, when items are coming in, how many items, sizes, those are the things that actually, when, when stores don't do those well, they might have an amazing product, but that sinks the store.

• 22:00Speaker 01

  So, your top line is what you do every day. Biggest cost is inventory.

• 22:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  You know, usually half your top line. Second and third biggest costs are payroll and rent, you know, and escalating leases, rent, and pay people adequately to keep them and incentivize them and stuff. So you gotta get that right. You gotta pay a lot of attention to it. And over time, over five or six years, it was always the inventory.

• 22:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Then having the hot stuff too, but then taking the risk. You gonna buy a hundred or you gonna buy a thousand?

• 22:31Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  A lot of people don't have the ability to do that, to see that, and to remember how it worked before, the time of year it was, and, and house size.

• 22:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 22:40Speaker 01

  And colors and, you know, and fabrics and all that.

• 22:43Guy Raz?

  Why would you, like, what was the value proposition? Why would I go to your store and buy something at your store rather than JCPenney's or another store? Did you, did you have things that you couldn't get anywhere else, or were your prices lower, or what?

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Prices weren't lower, but it was a lot of Northwest brands, some Genera, but a lot of Union Bay, and still Shaw Safari, and they did other brands called International News, and always t-shirts, almost all in guy sizes. Our junior business didn't come on till like in the 90s, but we had a lot of junior traffic, but you'd buy stuff that they couldn't find in a, a junior store.

• 23:20Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You mentioned this brand Shaw Safari, and it's interesting because this was a brand that was started in Seattle, and it was basically focused on, on apparel for young people. It was like a company that was actually started there, and it's still around, but, but, right?

• 23:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and Raj and Akil Shaw, I bought stuff from them when I was at Penny's. I knew them before Above the The Belt and Zoomies, they were into it and they obviously liked myself and Gary. And when it was important to have something at the right price, whether it was flannel or gauze or something in a short, they could supply it. I always knew the price point, what you could drive it and still make money, even if you had to mark it down.

• 24:03Guy Raz?

  And so, all right, so you have this store in the mall in the late 70s, early 80s. And it almost sounds like it was shooting fish in a barrel. Like you were just, you opened the doors and people came in and started buying stuff. Or am I?

• 24:17Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 24:18Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I was.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  Northgate Mall had traffic. Oh, here's something new. Yeah, let's check this out. Didn't spend a lot of money on advertising. Interesting thing about teenage clothing business, you have two violent peaks. Got back to school.

• 24:32Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Which, you know, it's longer, it used to be longer. Then you have the Christmas season.

• 24:37Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  So I was very aware of that from my years at Penny's, as was Gary. So you'd bite at that. And, you know, if you're working in, for instance, gifts or housewares, your violent peak was Mother's Day, which was a day, and Christmas, which was three weeks. In teenage clothes, it's different. You have two violent peaks, two bites at that apple to really nail it.

• 25:00Guy Raz?

  I'm very distracted by this term violent peaks because in 700 interviews on How I Built This, I've never heard it. Is that a Tom Campion term or is that a business term? Because I've never heard it.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  I can't remember. I don't think it was mine.

• 25:14Guy Raz?

  I'm just distracted because I don't like violence. I don't like it.

• 25:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I just meant that, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. Which was, it's energizing.

• 25:24Guy Raz?

  So Tom, you have this store and people are coming in. And at a certain point, I mean, I think within two years, you start to open your second store.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  It was in a year and it was 30 miles north of where Northgate was, 25 miles, a place called Everett, Washington.

• 25:44Guy Raz?

  Sure.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  And we opened it up at the following back to school. So it was about a year later.

• 25:48Guy Raz?

  And could you finance that through cash flow or did you have to take out more loans?

• 25:52Speaker 01

  SBA loan.

• 25:53Guy Raz?

  More SBA loans.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Went back to the bank and say, look, this is what we're doing. You know, we had it all documented and the guy's, you know, and he goes, oh, it's great. And we bought more inventory and opened like for back to school.

• 26:04Guy Raz?

  And were you worried? I mean, you weren't worried at all about being over leveraged, taking out more loans?

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Uh, no.

• 26:10Guy Raz?

  Because the business was doing well. You saw where it was heading.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:16Guy Raz?

  All right, so you have these stores and they're growing. And, I mean, were they very profitable? Were they barely profitable? Presumably, they were profitable because you were expanding.

• 26:30Speaker 01

  They were profitable. And we're not making a ton of money, but we're making a living and we're growing. And every year, I think we were able to pay ourselves a little more. I really don't remember, but yeah.

• 26:41Guy Raz?

  So you're like six, seven years into this business, Above the Belt, and it's doing pretty well. You're not like, as you say, you're not making crazy amounts of money, but you're able to support your family. And you've got, I think, around the mid 80s, around like 85, five or six stores at this point. But you changed direction entirely. Like, you stopped being just a regular apparel store and you pivoted like almost entirely to action sports, like skateboarding and surfing. So what happened? Why did you make this shift?

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Well, you could see it. We're going to shows in Southern Cal and action sports early, which was surf and skate, which was OP and-

• 27:20Guy Raz?

  Santa Cruz.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, but that skate was always Southern Cal.

• 27:25Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  But, you know, and by the mid 80s, there's enough of Northwesterners, they vacationed Southern Cal, warmer weather up and down the coast. It's easy to get to. And you could see this shopping the market in LA. And the first line I brought in to test this was a line called Gotcha Surfwear.

• 27:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  And a big fish man with his flag on it. And it just like, it was, for me, a holy shit moment, man. This is evolution and I'm doing all the buying then. And so it was immediately followed by Quicksilver.

• 27:57Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  And you could see this and how the kid responded to this. So it exploded. This shit is hot.

• 28:05Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, why Above the Belt has to change its name to Zoomies and why Tom decides he can attract more customers with a comfy orange couch. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 28:29Guy Raz?

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• 29:14Guy Raz?

  judgment, and control. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/built for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/built. Rules and restrictions may apply. AI isn't just opening new business opportunities, it's changing the way businesses get work done. The questions they ask, the decisions they make, the routine tasks they can hand off. That's the idea behind NetSuite Next, the next generation of NetSuite with AI woven into the tools your business already relies on. NetSuite Next surfaces insights exactly when you need them,

• 29:59Guy Raz?

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• 30:40Guy Raz?

  If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, get NetSuite's free business guide, Aligning for the Agentic Era: How AI is Changing Everyday Work, at netsuite.com/built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com/built. Netsuite.com/built. Stripe is built for whatever comes next because the pace of change has never been faster than it is right now. New business models, new currencies, and new expectations for speed, reliability, and scale. Stripe builds financial infrastructure that helps businesses start, grow, and operate globally.

• 31:20Guy Raz?

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• 32:05Guy Raz?

  Welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the mid-1980s, and Tom Campion notices that action sports are getting more popular up and down the West Coast. So he starts to change what he's selling in his stores, from traditional casual wear to clothes worn by skaters and surfers.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  And so, you know, it was Quicksilver and then Belabong and Gotcha. And Gotcha came and went, you know, they couldn't do it. But then, right away, I remember a clothing store, I picked up Rusty and Body Glove and Massimo.

• 32:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  And Red Sand. So new brands, brand of names that were significant, which meant t-shirts, sweatshirts and shorts in spring and hoodies in the fall. Every three, six months, it was a dynamic time. Kids are looking at that and go, whoa.

• 32:55Guy Raz?

  You were sort of seeing where the kids in Southern California were going. You were anticipating that there was going to be a huge appetite for that in the Pacific Northwest, which there was. You were presumably one of the only stores that was stocking all of this stuff.

• 33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had a competitor at the time that had about, started in South Seattle and Tacoma called Mr. Rags. And I think we were managed better. They got up to 150 stores and eventually they're gone. Yes, we were better at doing it. And it isn't like, one day you come in as a floor set, I'll surf and skate.

• 33:28Guy Raz?

  Right. It's gradual.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  It's gradual, but gradual doesn't mean you wait five years and try it. This is about, man, this shit's selling. We need more of this, right?

• 33:36Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  And then, right then, I bought hard goods, skate hard goods into the mall.

• 33:42Guy Raz?

  And when you say hard goods, you're not talking about the clothing, right? But the actual skateboards?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Skateboards.

• 33:46Guy Raz?

  Right. And trucks and wheels and those kinds of things, like the things that people usually had to go to buy at a skate shop?

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. I put them in the back of our stores, which is the, with the logos facing out. You're hanging them on the wall. You got them up on pegs or whatever. So the logos are showing. It became a whole lifestyle, you know? The skateboard kid was just friggin' cooler than the five guys that can be on a basketball team or 10 guys on a football team.

• 34:14Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  And how they dressed, how they looked, how they talked to each other, the lingo. And it's about kids growing up, going into adulthood, feeling good about being an individual and feeling good about what they do, you know? It's like, I could see that.

• 34:29Guy Raz?

  And you were not, you, I mean, by this point, you're like a guy in your sort of late 30s. I mean, you were not, this was not you. You were not a surfer or skater, right?

• 34:39Speaker 01

  Uh, neither. I always laugh. People say, oh, did you skateboard as a kid? No, this shit sells. It's just about stuff that sells.

• 34:47Guy Raz?

  I love it.

• 34:47Speaker 01

  You know, did you work for Boeing? Did you like fly planes as a kid? No, Boeing paid me a good salary to design the wingtip.

• 34:54Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 34:56Guy Raz?

  When you were, when you and Gary were running this and now, you know, the surf apparel is really driving above the belt, how did you guys divide up responsibility? Was he more sort of the business person and you were more sort of the front facing person? Or how, what do you remember about that?

• 35:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I remember that I took over the buying. And at that point, our office was still in the basement of Northgate Mall.

• 35:22Guy Raz?

  Wow, that was your headquarters.

• 35:23Speaker 01

  It was free. It was on the lease. It's free.

• 35:26Guy Raz?

  Oh, wow. So you could have all of your, your operations there. You could have your desks and computers and whatever.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  Yep. No computers, adding machines.

• 35:34Guy Raz?

  Adding machines, right. And so as you expanded, right? I mean, because you kept growing, building more stores in the Seattle area. Were you doing all this again through loans? Or at a certain point, were you able to just use the cash from the business?

• 35:50Speaker 01

  I'm sure there were still loans. I don't exactly remember, but they probably became less leveraged and they probably became smaller because we're working, you know, off of cash. But yeah.

• 36:01Guy Raz?

  All right. So I know by the late 1980s, as you're, as you're really starting to hit your stride, there's, there's like a whole new kind of boards for taking up, which of course is snowboarding. And that would become a huge part of your success, right?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Towards, you know, we, we are, I'm a mountain guy. We haven't talked about my personal life. I was always up hiking, backpacking, all that stuff. And I could see the board sports, the kid on the skateboard, where this was going. And in a, up in the Pacific Northwest, Mount Baker ski area, I called up Vision Street where I said, I want to carry Sim's snowboards. Oh, no, no, no. You can't do that. You're a skateboard shop. Well, I'm a skateboard shop because when- And they told me I couldn't carry skate. I did it anyway and we sold a ton of the darned things. And so.

• 36:55Guy Raz?

  Wait, wait, just to back up for a sec. You're saying that you called up one of your suppliers, Vision Streetwear, which sells snowboards and the person on the other end didn't want to sell any to you? Like they just refused?

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, and we started, he wouldn't sell me hard goods. I said, well, look, I'm a huge dealer of Vision Streetwear. You owe me, you're gonna give me a snowboard for every store. We're gonna have a contest at Christmas. You know, you fill out your name and address and a phone number. There's gonna be a winner of a Sim snowboard. We had like seven of them they sent us. We put them in the front of the store and the kids were like, look at this. And so we had like bags and bags of these entries. This is before computer. It isn't like you enter your email and get on the list and all this stuff. It's just old school, hard work. And we're creating buzz. And so I right away then, you know, after

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Christmas, call up Burton and I had Burton reps in. I forget the rep's name. But I always thought, I know I was close, be the first Burton retailer to bring product into malls in the United States. And this would have been 1989.

• 38:09Guy Raz?

  So you're talking about snowboards and?

• 38:11Speaker 01

  Snowboards, but really sold the clothes. You sold, you didn't make money on the, you made little money on the boards and the bindings and the boots. And so fall, you'd sell a pair of pants, a pair of jeans. But then they go, oh, you got a new category called snowboard pants. So the kids in the Northwest were like, oh, look at that kid on a snowboard. And I got skis and they're, you know, and they're in there buying instead of red, white and blue on their jacket or sweatshirt. It's orange and brown or black and, you know, and lime green and neon. And the parent goes, what the hell are you doing? Right? That kid that wanted to be the individual that just like, oh, man, this is, it's different music

• 38:53Speaker 01

  and more skulls on tees. And the beanies became hugely important.

• 38:57Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 38:58Speaker 01

  In the early 80s, we never carried beanies. Suddenly had a beanie with Burton on it or Sims or hugely important. And kid, he'd wear them for style, not just to keep his head warm.

• 39:08Guy Raz?

  And you would discover a lot of these things at trade shows and say, we gotta get those into the stores.

• 39:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and eventually you became, they came to you, right? The reps would come to you. So you're curating all the time, trying to, what's next, what's understanding. You'd have kids working with you and, you know.

• 39:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  And then you'd have all the logistics of managing inventory, all the paperwork or whatever. Yeah.

• 39:34Guy Raz?

  So, so Tom, 1993, you've got roughly 12 stores and your co-founder Gary Hawkinson, he decides to leave and you buy him, him out and he eventually became the mayor of Edmonds, Washington.

• 39:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:48Guy Raz?

  He was just tired, he was done with it, he was, wanted to move on?

• 39:51Speaker 01

  You know, we built it up. I never said, give me the five reasons you want to leave. We still were friends and getting along. He says, I'm ready to do something else. And so we had to put a value on it. We were able to work out a contract where I bought him out and then I became, he kept a little bit of it, I think, but I became like 95% of the ownership. And at that time, I brought, met through a mutual friend, a guy named Rick Brooks, who was in between jobs, who was an accountant. And I said, you know, my founding partner, he wants to get out. I've thought about it. And he, he joined me, bought in for a little bit and I gave him a bigger option.

• 40:34Speaker 01

  But it was a big aha moment for me here, Guy. And I go, I could take money off the table and money's always tight and I've never made money off this and, you know.

• 40:44Guy Raz?

  You mean, you could have sold, you could have sold too, too?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:47Guy Raz?

  So you basically had a decision to make because, I bet, I mean, how much do you think the company was worth in 1993?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  It was worth some money. That, you know, it's never been made public, so we don't need to do it now. And he took.

• 41:01Guy Raz?

  But you could have sold too and you would have had

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:04Guy Raz?

  Some, a couple million bucks on the table, you know?

• 41:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, not that, probably not that much. And I was all agitated for a month. It was just, it was, you know, I was just like, and I'm working with a coach, shrink or whatever you want to call it. And he goes, this is really bothering you. Maybe you. I'm gonna get emotional here. Maybe you like what you do. It was just an aha moment. I love this stuff and what we were doing. And I go, ah, man, we need to do this. I need to help keep growing this. I like this. You know, wherever it goes, I don't know where it's gonna go, but I love doing this. And Rick came in. He took half off the table and I stayed.

• 41:44Guy Raz?

  Got it.

• 41:44Speaker 01

  I've always loved everything I've done. What a privilege. Seventy-four, I still say, I love this.

• 41:51Guy Raz?

  So you, so you're, you know, your co-founder Gary is out of the picture. You've got about 12 stores. You're now approaching your mid-forties. So you've got, but you've got a new partner, Rick Brooks. And this is ninety-three. And not that long after, ninety-four, your brand, Above the Belt, gets sued by another clothing store that had the same name. I mean, at this point, you had an established brand with like 12 stores. I mean, weren't you kind of worried about, oh, my God, we gotta completely start rebrand this thing?

• 42:25Speaker 01

  No, it was a women's apparel store called Above the Belt in California. So they were gonna sue us, so we had to come up with a new name. And the first couple of years, when we changed it, didn't make a difference. Where am I? What's the name of the parents in shopping with the kid? Didn't matter.

• 42:42Guy Raz?

  Didn't matter. And how did you come up with the name, Zumiez, by the way?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  I did. And we were, we didn't hire a branding and, you know, blah, blah, blah and all. We, I had a meeting with some of my most creative people one night. We're thinking about this. We knew we had to do this and, you know, we couldn't figure it out. And I was reading a Smithsonian magazine about Zuni Indians. And I go, oh, Zee, oh, man, Zee, Young and Fun Zee is a great letter for graphic and on teenage clothes. You know, some words start with Z and with Z and whatever. So I go, Zoom, Zumiez, Young and Fun Zoom Fast. And we had a design guy that was working with us then, named Doug. And Doug screwed up the spelling, Z-U-M-I-E-Z. And I look at it and I go, that's it?

• 43:28Speaker 01

  And it means nothing, it means everything. It means brands. It's action sports. It's fun. It's individual.

• 43:33Guy Raz?

  It's just a completely made up word.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:36Guy Raz?

  Z U M I E Z, Zumiez and that. And so you basically decided, yeah, who cares about the name above the belt? That doesn't matter. All that matters is kids know to come to these shops to buy the things that they want to buy.

• 43:48Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:48Guy Raz?

  So Zumiez now becomes the brand. It's you and Rick Brooks. And how do you, I mean, at this point, it's 1994. What do you remember about the ambitions at that point? Because I think around that time, you had about 20, maybe 25 stores, a lot, all in the Pacific Northwest. But at this point, was it clear to you that this has to become a national brand?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:11Guy Raz?

  No.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  Their first store in the Rockies was Boulder, Colorado, Crossroads Mall. I think that's gone now. And then we worked our way down into Denver.

• 44:20Guy Raz?

  And it was all malls. The strategy was open in malls because that's where the teenagers are.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:24Guy Raz?

  Go to the malls.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  America shopped in malls.

• 44:27Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  And we were doing this. And there would be people in these new malls, retailers that carried this, but they weren't authentic like us because of the hard goods, because of, you know, the detail we spent with the stickers and the look of the store and the colors and the kids we'd hire. And we just worked the lines and the categories and the evolution. It wasn't until the late 80s, early 90s, we got into shoes. And the first one was Airwalks, but then Etnies, which is still around us, and Vans. And Vans is a huge part of our business.

• 45:02Guy Raz?

  I'm curious about something that you had in the stores, and you have in the stores today, which is a couch. You very consciously put a couch in the stores. Eventually, you put things in like video games, all really designed to keep people in the stores longer.

• 45:16Speaker 01

  Yep. Yep. It was part of the lifestyle. And I remember the first store we did that in, it was, I think it was in Bellevue Square or Alderwood Mall.

• 45:24Guy Raz?

  In Seattle.

• 45:25Speaker 01

  We had a creative guy, one of my lead buyers in Seattle, his name was Art, a great friend and was all part of this. And we set up the orange couch and just old furniture you'd buy at St. Vinnie's or something. Couple chairs and funky lamp and it was all about hanging out, right?

• 45:41Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Then we buy an old TV and you put a new TV in it and you'd play the snowboard or the skate videos and the kid would come in and he'd be sitting down hanging. It it'll create a couple of dynamics. There's always kids in the store hanging out. You're walking by a mall, there's a lot of people in the store, you go, oh, what's going on in there? So they had the energy, they're driving them in. Also, the parent would sit there while the kid's working around, you know, or maybe trying on a pair of shoes, but the parent might be sitting there talking to the employee and you're creating a dynamic with the the the parent, you know, we want you to feel comfortable in here. And just, you know, what's going on?

• 46:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah, I want to ask you about culture for for a moment because you're in a business and you were you were growing a business in the 90s that really relied on a lot of teenagers and young adults, sort of college age kids to make it work. I mean, and and there's a lot of turnover and they're not always so reliable. And so would you hire a specific type of person? I mean, you're you're looking for a kid who can hustle and sell and

• 46:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:45Guy Raz?

  So who was that kind of kid you were looking for?

• 46:48Speaker 01

  You know, sometime he or she was into the sport and sometimes they weren't, but they had that, you know, if you have that natural talent, you can see it. It isn't whether you're introverted or extroverted, you figure out if you're introverted, how to overcome that. Obviously, I'm pretty extroverted, you can hear me yakking and getting a passion and and falling into this. And you learn over time how to curate that kid to get the right kid that wants to work for you. And I go back, Guy, and I could tell you it was a time in a grocery store when my store manager pulled me aside and I was just working really hard and he goes, you're really good at what you do. I remember where I was in the store. His name was Bud and it was in the produce aisle and I go,

• 47:33Speaker 01

  fuck, this is really important.

• 47:35Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 47:35Speaker 01

  And we're getting towards the end of Christmas and we're just like, come on, you gotta go, let's go, let's go. And I go, I gotta create an event where I thank kids for what they do because everybody's just leaving it on the sales All right, they're just working, you know, retail hours, working till late.

• 47:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Straight into the store, coming back the next morning, rotten weather. Sometimes you're, you got a cold and stuff and, and the pressure. So I decided, we decided, any kid that sold a hundred thousand bucks, I'm going to take them out to dinner. You know, basic thing to say, thank you.

• 48:06Guy Raz?

  A hundred thousand dollars in a year?

• 48:08Speaker 01

  In a year.

• 48:09Guy Raz?

  One kid, a hundred thousand dollars. Wow, okay.

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that was way back then. That was like five US presidents ago.

• 48:16Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 48:16Speaker 01

  And, and we built that up, became known as a hundred K and the next year it was whatever. And then we said, oh, we're into snowboards. We're going to take them snowboarding. We'll do an event on a mountain. So it was a, and this last year I had over 2,000 kids that sold over a hundred grand.

• 48:31Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  My number one employee sold over a million, a million, one employee. And so it's like two days of great parties, fun, a lot of prizes and a lot of stuff from Action Sports Company. Saying thank you, but acknowledging you're good at what you do.

• 48:49Guy Raz?

  I want to ask you about what happened in, in the sort of late 90s because I feel like kind of skater culture really exploded. I mean, there was Tony Hawk and, you know, obviously he's this kind of the LeBron James of skateboarding. But things like the X Games started, right? And so all of a sudden, and you know, you start to see skateboarding events on ESPN and, and it becomes much more mainstream. You guys are really riding this. I mean, you're, you're, you were out in front of it, but you're out there growing. And I wonder, I mean, around this time, and it may have started a little bit earlier. You guys got some pushback from skater culture, right? There were some people in the culture would say, Zoomies isn't for real skaters.

• 49:30Guy Raz?

  It's for posers. It's for people go to malls. It's not for the real authentic skaters who go to skate shops.

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, there was pushback. Usually it was from a competitive core skate shop. And I'm going to say it again, we weren't cheaper. The brands we got and the hard goods we got, we taught and trained our kid who was just as core as a kid that worked in the local skater, snowboard shop and skated or snowboarded and rode the big mountain. We were not cheaper. We had great product because I paid bills and we had perception what was coming.

• 50:04Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 50:04Speaker 01

  And our kids sold because they were units per transaction, dollars per transaction, dollar per hour. And there was a measure and a reward and a recognition around how they did that.

• 50:15Guy Raz?

  You didn't care when people said you weren't, you weren't cool. You just, you thought that was just competitors trying to-

• 50:21Speaker 01

  People tell you, you can't do stuff all your life. You keep doing, you know, look at it. You keep pushing till they tell you no. And then you go back and, you know, I always had a famous line, an old friend of mine, "When the customer says no is when the sale begins."

• 50:36Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Zoomy stayed alive during the pandemic, and why Tom thinks customers will keep coming to the store even though malls are supposed to be dead. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

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• 52:09Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's around 2002 and Zumiez is doing nearly $100 million a year in sales. And then it does two things a lot of growing companies do. It takes on its first big chunk of private equity and then, a few years after that, it goes public. I'm curious, because you went public in 2005 and I think the IPO raised about another $30 million.

• 52:37Speaker 01

  Yep, I think we had 250 stores and Rick's running by then, so I'd go and as the founder, I'd tell pretty much a different version or similar points, what you and I have been talking about, and then Rick'd talk about the vision.

• 52:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah. You know, it's interesting, because I've interviewed so many leaders and founders in the retail space over the last 10 years. And I remember I interviewed a former CEO of Macy's and that's a tough business, right? It's JCPenney's where you started your career, right? It's barely a shadow of itself today. People don't go into department stores in the United States as much as they used to. And this started to really happen, obviously, in the late 2000s, when e-commerce really started to take off. And this inevitably was going to challenge a business like yours that was in shopping malls, right?

• 53:34Speaker 01

  Yes and no. And the yes, of course, some of it went online, but we had a cultural experience inside Zumiez and we were still fun and we were engaging and it wasn't just the cheapest price.

• 53:49Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 53:49Speaker 01

  And it wasn't just a convenience thing. That teenager, our 20, 12 to 24-year-old action sports kid, the art, lifestyle, street, whatever you want to call it.

• 54:01Guy Raz?

  They still wanted to go into the shop.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  They still wanted to.

• 54:03Guy Raz?

  Even though the mall traffic has dwindled, you know?

• 54:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I tell you, March 2020, we closed all our stores around the world. One day, March 2020. Twenty first, whatever. We were one of very few retailers, because we have a good balance sheet, that we paid all our full-time employees. We still paid them. All the part-timers, you furloughed them. They got unemployment in our country and, you know, they had to sort it out. And of course, our online business went up, but not to make up for what we did in stores.

• 54:34Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  And we knew that. And after, you know, April and then middle of May, stores started opening up again. That middle of May, we were the first ones open, because we didn't lose our employees. We paid them and we worked it. Kids want to hang out in stores. They want to talk to an employee that thinks like them, dresses, you know, whatever. What's the music? What's going on? What's the sport?

• 54:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  You know, and we probably sell more skateboard products than anybody in the world now with our

• 55:03Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 55:03Speaker 01

  And it was our different stores in Europe and in Australia and US and Canada.

• 55:09Guy Raz?

  I, I know that you, you've got a Zumi's product line, and it doesn't, it's not the main driver of your revenue by any means.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it doesn't, we don't use the word Zumi's. We've never put Zumi's on it.

• 55:19Guy Raz?

  You don't put Zumi's on, right. And I, but I wonder, like, there must have been a time where you were really pushed to do that, where people said, we got to just really lean into this, because look at Abercrombie, look at Aeropostale, look at The Gap, they've all, but in actual fact, it worked out well, because those other brands had their own line and, of course,

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:38Guy Raz?

  had problems, had trouble.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  You lose points on the margin, not being vertical, but you gain on the assortment plan, where it's more diverse. And if, if this shit stops selling, you mark it down, you get rid of it, you don't go forward.

• 55:52Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  We measure that. We measure new brands and how long we had and how many stores. We're measuring this stuff now all the time. And who can grow from 50 stores to 500 stores? And how it's different in Europe or, you know, and there's brands that won't sell us, you know, still, because, you know, they want to be more exclusive, and which is, which is fine. But we do a lot of private label in certain categories, like in denim and outerwear and stuff, and there are labels that, oh my god, you know, I've got very cool pants. Pants are really big with this right now, under our jean label empire, because we pay attention to the action sports, the kid, the skater kid. Yeah, it's organized chaos, a little like life.

• 56:38Guy Raz?

  Tell me about this concept of organized chaos, this idea inside the store.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I was, I can't remember if that was my term. Yeah, I've used it forever. You know, like a kid's bedroom or whatever.

• 56:50Guy Raz?

  Just crap everywhere, stuff everywhere.

• 56:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have a lot of product in our stores. If business is going good, you got, oh, you gotta add, you know, you started with less categories, then we added shoes, and we added juniors, and we added skate, we added snow. And so organized chaos would be a store that's a lot of action, there's a lot of color, there's a lot of screens, you know, imprints of screens of what's going on. There'd be signage and something to store, but it's fun, it's edgy, it's trend right. We have a whole routine. We teach chaos, life a lot of times is chaos. We've learned how to love that, embrace that, use that, and grow the chain.

• 57:30Guy Raz?

  You have devoted a lot of your time and your dollars to different conservation efforts in the Arctic, in Alaska, in the Pacific Northwest, really, and on Capitol Hill, and working with politicians to preserve the natural world. But I have a, I have a sort of a question about it that I wonder whether you sometimes, something you might wrestle with, which is, the apparel business is one of the most polluting businesses in the world. It is, it is full stop. I mean, and it's not just to make it and dumping all the pollution into rivers and streams, but to ship it across oceans to the United

• 58:12Guy Raz?

  States. When people buy things, right, when people buy a lot of stuff, just by default, me, you, everybody listening, we produce carbon emissions, because to make something, you've got to burn something, right? And I wonder how you wrestle with that. And I'm not asking you this to make you feel guilty, Tom, because I also eat meat and I pollute. I just, being a human, you do that, right?

• 58:33Speaker 01

  So, let me tell you how I've, how I think about it. I always say, when I may be lobbying Congress on climate, you know, I may be the biggest hypocrite in the room, but this is what we need to do.

• 58:45Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  I make stuff, oil-based products like shoes and clothing in Asia. Put them on a diesel freighter, send them to Southern Cal, put them in my distribution center, split them to 600 stores, every state in the Union. And then to go in and buy the product, you gotta get in a gas-fired car to go in there. So, while I'm a hypocrite, I know my employees and my customers will tell you, "Yeah, but we need to do better." Which, turns out, this year, they did. The biggest climate bill in the history of the world. So, you have to do it as a country, and we have to do it as a world, like we have the big conferences around the world. And you see it in the auto industry, and see it in transmission lines, you can see it in how we generate energy.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  And now, that's happening with fabrics and inks on fabrics. For instance, now, we do a lot of, it's called DTG, direct-to-garment printing, where we use sustainable inks and stuff.

• 59:42Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 59:43Speaker 01

  And more sustainable t-shirt. I am not Saint Thomas. I am working, trying to shape this with the influence in Zoomies. We have a team that works on this, but I think we can do better. You know, I know you, I listened to your interview with Chenard, Patagonia. He's the same way, right? He's doing it and trying to make it more sustainable. All our products, and we carry so much, high percentage of brands, are not totally sustainable now, but they're working in that direction.

• 1:00:13Guy Raz?

  One of the things I remember Yvon Chenard said to me when I interviewed him was, he doesn't want people to buy, and I believe in him when he says this, he does not want people to buy a lot of his stuff. He wants people to buy a jacket once and get it repaired.

• 1:00:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a, it's a very different market strategy. He's totally vertical, he's his own brand. I could say, "I'm gonna be carbon neutral, and you're gonna pay an extra 10 bucks for every unit of clothing in our stores." And because how consumerism works, and how markets works, and economies work, it would be a very noble thing to do, but you wouldn't be able to sustain that.

• 1:00:53Guy Raz?

  You're in your mid 70s. I know you're not running the day to day of Zoomies, but you're still very much involved. Like, how involved are you? I mean, do you go to regular meetings? Do you get, you know, updates?

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  So, I do all the, I'm, I call myself the charge of the culture still, even though that's not even total accurate. I'm following it all the time. Rick and I have great friendship. We're communicating on a regular basis. I'm chairman of the board, so I'm in all the board meetings. I do all the major cultural events, the 100K and the managers retreat. And with the head of stores, with the head of buying team. I don't travel as much to stores because of my age, but still very, yeah, I'm still very engaged in what's going on.

• 1:01:38Guy Raz?

  When you, when you think about, you know, this brand and this business, I mean, the culture around skating and around snowboarding has just grown and evolved. And it's also a lot more diverse now. I remember when I was a kid, it seemed like most of the kids who were skaters were white. And now it's very different. Like, I go to skate parks and you just see kids from all backgrounds and cultures.

• 1:02:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, it was white when we got into it in Pacific Northwest in the mid 80s. Now it's 600 stories. Zoomies with, I think we got 10, 12,000 Gen Z's this month, probably 10,000. We are so multicultural with Hispanic, Black, Asian, Indigenous, pretty much 50/50, men, women. Very welcoming place for LBGTQ and talking about all that. And because that's America. I'm really proud of that. You know, you look at America, you're under 30. It is a minority majority country now. We argue about the wrong things. We, we should be arguing about how we all become better, you know, how to grow this country with this

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  incredible opportunity. If I can drive that employee to feel good about his or herself, about what they're doing, you know, as the world changes and evolves and kids coming up have maybe an experience like I did, it'd be a good thing.

• 1:03:04Guy Raz?

  Tom, when you think about all that you've accomplished and achieved in your 74 years now, starting at pennies and above the belt and into a company with more than 700 stores in countries around the world and thousands of employees, I think 10,000 employees, most of them part-time, of course, but it's a lot of people that's employed by the company. And then all the work that you've been able to do with your money, with the resources that you've made from this, you've been able to really spend it in ways that you've wanted to around conservation. How much of all of that do you attribute to how hard you worked and the intelligence and the strategy that you put in place? And

• 1:03:46Guy Raz?

  how much do you think has to do with just being lucky, just catching the skate surf wave?

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  This isn't luck. It has nothing to do with luck. That's not arrogant. It's not luck. It's about measured discipline, hard work going forward. Luck may be a very small part of it. It's hard work. It's why not a lot of people do it because it's hard work. I mean, bad luck would have been a competitor that thought about it like I did. So two of them coming up at the same time. But it's, you know, America's got credible opportunity. My old man was a mailman. And now here I'm talking about, oh, yeah, I've got 700 some stores, like, big whoop.

• 1:04:27Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  And I'm still here, sitting there talking to you in this cold, wet morning because I've been retail 56 years. I still love what I do. And I mean, that goes to this day. I mean, I'm looking at comps what Zumiez did yesterday at 5 o'clock this morning, 44 years later.

• 1:04:46Guy Raz?

  That's Tom Campion, co-founder of Zumiez. And by the way, speaking of luck, in 1970, Tom had to register for the draft during the Vietnam War. He remembers his draft number. It was 248. But that year, only men with numbers up to 219 were sent to fight in Vietnam. So Tom stayed home. And eight years later, he launched what would become Zumiez.

• 1:05:16Guy Raz?

  Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. If you want to contact the team, our email address is [email protected]. If you want to follow us on Twitter, our account is @howibuiltthis and mine is @GuyRaz. And on Instagram, we're @howibuiltthis and I'm at Guy.Raz. This episode was produced by Casey Herman with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Susanna Brown. Our production staff also includes J.C. Howard, Kira Wakim, Carrie Thompson, Alex Chung, Sam Paulson, Elaine Coats, John Isabella, Chris Messini, and Carla Estevez. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.