Title Nine: Missy Park (October 2021)

Summary

How I Built This with Guy Raz: Missy Park (October 2021)

Release Date: April 7, 2025

In this compelling episode of How I Built This, Guy Raz delves into the inspiring journey of Missy Park, the founder and CEO of Title IX, one of the pioneering brands dedicated to women's sports apparel. Missy's story is a testament to resilience, innovation, and unwavering passion for empowering female athletes through well-designed gear.

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Early Life and Influences

Missy Park hails from Greenville, South Carolina, where she grew up in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains during the transformative 1960s and 1970s. Her upbringing was significantly influenced by her parents—her father, a World War II veteran turned entrepreneur, and her mother, a forward-thinking homemaker who championed financial independence for women.

Quote:
"I remember my mom fighting to get her credit card in her own name rather than in Mrs. Russell Hunter Park."
— Missy Park [07:25]

This environment fostered Missy's entrepreneurial spirit and her commitment to gender equality, laying the foundation for her future endeavors.

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College Years and Athletic Identity

Missy's academic journey took her to Yale University, where she excelled as a Division 1 basketball player. Title IX, a U.S. civil rights law passed in 1972, played a pivotal role in her athletic opportunities, mandating equal sport participation for women in federally funded educational programs.

Quote:
"Title IX was required to take effect in schools. 1976, Missy Park joined her high school basketball team in Greenville, South Carolina."
— Guy Raz [04:22]

Despite the increased opportunities, Missy and her teammates faced challenges such as ill-fitting sports gear and limited resources, which fueled her desire to create better athletic apparel for women.

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Founding Title IX: The Early Struggles

In 1989, at the age of 26, Missy Park founded Title IX, naming it after the legislation that had so profoundly impacted her athletic career. Operating out of her garage in Berkeley, California, with a modest investment of $30,000, Missy embarked on her entrepreneurial journey by launching a mail-order catalog for women's sportswear.

Quote:
"I was super flat chested. We're gonna say double A on a good day, so that's an afterthought for me."
— Missy Park [43:06]

The initial launch was fraught with difficulties. Missy mailed out 15,000 catalogs but received only 15 orders, highlighting the steep challenges of breaking into a nascent market.

Quote:
"And I think we got a whopping maybe 15 orders. Maybe seven of them were from someone that I did not know."
— Missy Park [45:58]

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Overcoming Financial Hardships

The early years were marked by significant financial strain, including earning $200,000 in debt. Missy contemplates quitting multiple times but finds solace and encouragement through support from her partner, Dana, and her father.

Quote:
"My solution then was to call my dad, because he was. Whenever I talked with him, he always just had, like, the one good piece of advice that I needed to hold on to."
— Missy Park [51:28]

Missy's perseverance eventually led Title IX to profitability around 1993, underscoring the importance of resilience and continuous improvement.

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Strategic Growth and Brand Philosophy

Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Title IX focused on direct-to-consumer marketing, leveraging mail-order catalogs and participating in sporting events to build a loyal customer base. Missy's approach emphasized hitting singles—making incremental progress without relying on external investors, thus maintaining complete control over the company's vision and operations.

Quote:
"One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience... You have to make sure you're hitting singles, because no one's going to be that patient."
— Missy Park [54:55]

Missy's leadership philosophy centers on hiring for passion rather than mere qualifications, fostering a supportive and authentic company culture.

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Navigating Downturns and Leadership Transitions

In 2014-2015, Title IX faced a significant downturn due to Missy's delayed shift from a print-focused model to a digital one. This strategic misstep led to inventory surpluses and financial losses, prompting Missy to bring in a new president, Johnny Lin, to steer the company back on course.

Quote:
"If Title IX were a publicly traded company, someone should fire me right now."
— Missy Park [70:54]

Missy's acknowledgment of her leadership flaws illustrates her commitment to the company's long-term sustainability over personal accolades.

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Embracing Digital Transformation and Sustained Growth

As the digital landscape evolved, Title IX adapted by enhancing its online presence and balancing e-commerce with brick-and-mortar stores. The company maintained steady growth, reaching approximately $100 million in revenue, while remaining committed to its original mission of supporting female athletes.

Quote:
"The sole purpose of a publicly traded company or a private equity backed company is to maximize shareholder value in purely financial terms. And plain and simple, I haven't done that."
— Missy Park [72:18]

Missy's focus remained on value creation beyond financial metrics, emphasizing mentorship, community support, and sustainable business practices.

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Legacy and Future Aspirations

Reflecting on her 30-plus-year journey, Missy Park attributes her success to a combination of luck and hard work, with an emphasis on the latter. She envisions Title IX continuing to thrive under new leadership, ensuring its legacy of empowering women through sports apparel endures.

Quote:
"I had to be a young woman growing up in the 70s and 80s, not in the 40s and 50s. That's luck."
— Missy Park [84:30]

Missy's story is not just about building a successful business but also about fostering a movement that champions gender equality in sports. Her dedication serves as an inspiration for aspiring female entrepreneurs aiming to make a meaningful impact.

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Conclusion

Missy Park's journey with Title IX embodies the spirit of entrepreneurship—overcoming adversity, staying true to core values, and continuously evolving to meet market demands. Her unwavering commitment to creating quality athletic apparel for women has not only built a successful brand but also empowered countless female athletes to perform at their best.

Final Quote:
"If you want to do something really great, whether that's being a great mom or being a great entrepreneur, you're really going to have to dig in and have a lot of imbalance for a while."
— Missy Park [66:48]

Missy Park's story is a masterclass in innovation, leadership, and resilience, providing invaluable lessons for anyone looking to build something meaningful from the ground up.

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Key Takeaways:

• The importance of resilience and persistence in overcoming early business struggles.
• The value of hiring passionate individuals who align with the company's mission.
• Balancing incremental growth with strategic pivots to adapt to changing markets.
• Fostering a company culture that prioritizes value creation over mere financial gains.
• The significance of mentorship and community support in sustaining long-term business success.

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This summary encapsulates the essence of Missy Park's entrepreneurial journey as detailed in her interview on "How I Built This." For a deeper dive into her story, listening to the full episode is highly recommended.

Transcript

[Guy Raz]

Wondery subscribers can listen to How I built this early and ad free right now. Join Wondery in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Peloton has what you need to achieve your fitness goals no matter why you got started. From four week strength building classes to running, indoor and outdoor workouts, and everything in between, Peloton will push you to achieve your goals. Peloton also helps you get stronger with workout generators and personalized programs on the peloton Tread and StrengthPlus app. It's backed by thousands of members whose lives have been changed by Peloton and the community around it. Find your push Find your power with [e-mail] have you ever been hanging out at an Airbnb and kind of scrolling through your phone when you realize, could I do this too? Because here's the thing. You don't need to own a beachfront villa or a mountain chalet to get started. Sometimes you it's as simple as that extra bedroom down the hall. Find out how much your place is [e-mail] host creating really great retail experiences is tough, especially with multiple stores, teams of staff, fulfillment centers, separate workflows. It's a lot. But with Shopify Point of Sale, you can do it all without complexity. Shopify's Point of Sale system is a unified command center for your retail business. It brings together in store and online operations across a thousand locations. Endless aisle ship to customer, buy online, pickup in store, all made simpler so customers can shop how they want and staff have the tools to close the sale every time. With Shopify POS you can keep shoppers coming back with personalized experiences and first party data that give marketing teams competitive edge. Want more? Check [e-mail] built all lowercase and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity. Shopify.combilt hey everyone, it's Guy here. So this week we're bringing you a really great episode from the archive. It's with Missy park, who came on the show to tell a story of Title ix, the women's sports apparel brand. The the company had a pretty rocky launch in the late 1980s, but as you'll hear, a last minute addition to its mail order catalog changed everything. This episode first ran back in October.

[Missy Park]

Of 2021 and hope you enjoy it. So you get these catalogs, 15 or 20,000 catalogs. And how did you do? How many orders did you get from those?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So we put those catalog and then I'm just waiting for the phone to ring. Yeah and waiting and waiting.

[Missy Park]

Okay.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And I think we got a whopping maybe 15 orders. Maybe seven of them were from someone that I did not know.

[Missy Park]

Wow. That's from mailing out over 20,000 catalogs. That's the hit rate.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Super sad. Super sad.

[Guy Raz]

Welcome to How I Built this, a.

[Missy Park]

Show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz.

[Guy Raz]

And on the show today, how Missy Park's frustration with bad fitting sports gear led her to launch Title ix, one.

[Missy Park]

Of the very first American sportswear brands exclusively for women. About a year ago, I was riding my bike near the railroad tracks in Berkeley, California, when I passed a clothing store with an unusual name. The store was called Title 9, and.

[Guy Raz]

I thought it might have something to do with a law, but a law.

[Missy Park]

I couldn't remember right at that moment.

[Guy Raz]

So a few days later, I looked it up.

[Missy Park]

Title IX, I was reminded, was a.

[Guy Raz]

US civil rights law.

[Missy Park]

Passed in 1972, it prohibited discrimination based on sex in any federally funded school or educational program. And among the things the law did was to open up high school and college sports to women. Colleges and universities that received federal dollars now had to provide the same opportunities for women to participate in sports as they did for men. In that year, 1972, less than 20% of all the athletes on the U.S. olympic team were women. But by 2016, nearly 55% of the team was female. And much of this is because of Title ix. The same year, Title IX was required to take effect in schools. 1976, Missy park joined her high school basketball team in Greenville, South Carolina. She'd go on to play Division 1 basketball at Yale. But after years of wearing bad fitting sports apparel as a student athlete, Missy decided to solve her own problem. And in 1989, long before anyone would hear the names Lululemon or Athleta, Missy park founded Title ix, one of the first brands to make sports apparel for women. Now today, many of those other brands are multi billion doll, either backed by venture capital or publicly traded. But Title IX is comparatively small. This year, it will do roughly $100 million in revenue. And unlike its competitors, Title IX is owned only by one person, Missy Park. She bootstrapped the brand from day one and built it very, very slowly. If the company grew by 5 or even 10% a year, that was considered a victory. And that slow growth has allowed the company to build a sustainable and supportive culture. Missy park grew up in the 60s and 70s in Greenville, South Carolina, in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains. Her dad was a World War II veteran and became kind of an overnight entrepreneur when he bought the small manufacturing company that he once worked for. And as for her mom, my mom.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

On the other hand, was a stay at home mom. And we always accuse her of being part of a secret feminist cell in Greenville, South Carolina in the 60s, because she was what she thought women ought to be paid for birthing babies. Yeah, I would say that was pretty ahead of her time. My mom and dad had separate checking accounts. I remember my mom fighting to get her credit card in her own name rather than in Mrs. Russell Hunter Park. So my mom loved being a full time homemaker, but she thought it was a position worth paying for.

[Missy Park]

And this was really. I mean, this is. People don't remember. I mean, the 70s was. I mean, this is the era of era Equal Rights Amendment and of Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug. You know, with her hats. Right. There was huge leaps and strides that happened in the 70s. And from your description of your mom, she was either secretly harboring those feelings or maybe not so secretly harboring them.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, well, you know, my parents were so unusual. Like, my mom was in charge of the girls and our allowances and we had budgets and we had to reconcile at the end of every month. And we had to give money to savings and to offerings, and each year we would take on other responsibilities. It was her expectation that we would go up to be financially independent women capable of running our own finances in our own life.

[Missy Park]

Yeah. And as a little girl, or maybe even a young teen, did you know for sure you were not gonna end up living in Greenville, South Carolina?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

No, I would say I'm the kind of person that maybe everybody else is for sure about it. And no one's more surprised than me. You know, I really loved growing up in Greenville. It was at the time a great place for me. It's a small place. I could ride my bike everywhere. I was in that first generation of girls and women that were able to grow up with Title IX being in effect all the way through high school and all the way through college.

[Missy Park]

And of course, Title IX just kind of opened up sports for women and girls at the time. And you got to play lots of things.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yes, I got to play every sport. You know, I mean, I. Coming up, when I did, especially as a girl, you just played all the sports, and if you were willing to play and you were willing to try, you were pretty good because there weren't as many women pouring into the sports and fields as there are now. So, yes, we Will say, guy, I think that I was a big fish in a very small pond. That's what I'll say.

[Missy Park]

Well, I'm curious, because here you are. You were in a small southern town in the 70s, being a debutante as a. Was to some extent, still is, but less. Less. So was a kind of a cultural phenomenon in the South. Was there? Like, were you a debutante, for example?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Oh, my gosh, I hate your guts right now. So let's just go on the record right now. I hate your guts. Yes, I was a debutante. Now, you and me and all of your listeners know that. And in my home office here, you could see my little rebellion against that. There's a picture of me at, what, about 19 in a white gown with long gloves that actually won't go up above my upper arm and biceps, sadly. And I'm spinning a basketball, and I have my basketball sneakers on.

[Missy Park]

So you were forced or kind of pressured to be a debutante.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

You know, here's the danger of things like that. I'm just a kid. This is where I grow up. And now I look back on it and I see it differently. But it was one of those things, you know, I love my mom and dad and had very quickly understood, like, there's some battles that if you can give in and it's not much skin off my back, then I should just do it because it's gonna make my mom so happy. But it is the source of a lot of amusement amongst my family and close friends. More because it's so different from who you are. From who I am, exactly.

[Missy Park]

Yeah. And how would you describe yourself as a teenager? Were you. Did you get along with everybody? Were you a pleaser?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

No, no. Definitely not a pleaser. I would say I'm pretty loud. I speak before I think I have strong opinions. That can change quickly. I think I was an okay student. I think I got along well with most folks. Yeah.

[Missy Park]

I mean, you must have been better than an okay student because you went to Yale. You attended Yale.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I will also tell you this, that we joke about it in my family, but my parents single greatest failing is that they have a daughter that went to Yale.

[Missy Park]

Because.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

There'S an awful lot of good schools in the South.

[Missy Park]

Sure.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And there are. So I think that. I think my parents really wanted me to go to one of those great southern schools.

[Missy Park]

All right, you're 1980, I think about 1980. You get to New Haven.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yep.

[Missy Park]

You played several sports there. Lacrosse, tennis and basketball. You are an athlete. That is your Was that your identity, your self identity as an athlete?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Totally, yeah.

[Missy Park]

You get to Yale, you're Missy park, the basketball player.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yes, the Southern basketball player. When I get to Yale, Yeah.

[Missy Park]

And just to be clear, there were. There were women's sports, right, at Yale, there had been for a long time. But the difference when you got there was Title IX, which had been. Was passed in 1972, was in full effect.

[Guy Raz]

Right, right.

[Missy Park]

And so what did that mean when you were. When you got to Yale, 1980, as a student athlete?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, I think a lot with my generation in particular guy, you know, yes, Title IX was passed. Yes, the 70s had happened, but we were still in that place of everything that we gain is a loss for the guys on the other side of it. Right.

[Missy Park]

That was a perspective that you, as a woman athlete, are taking away resources from me as a male athlete.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Exactly. And in some ways, yes, that was true. It's like all of a sudden, the men's basketball team doesn't have the pick of all of the basketball practice times. They have to share them with the women's team.

[Missy Park]

Did those four years feel like there were battles?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, well, I think it also, it goes to sort of the Genesis of Title 9. The company is, you know, me and my teammates are getting uniforms that are, hand me down men's uniforms. I remember my buddy, Regina Sullivan, she wore, I think like a size six and a half women's shoe, but they don't make women's shoes. So she had to go to, like, the little kids department at Macy's and buy some little boy sneakers. So the sense of having to create the traditions around a team, what it means to get success, while at the same time fighting for the good practice times, marketing, support in the community, those were battles being fought on two fronts, for sure. And as I said, the genesis of Title ix. I mean, I remember my buddies and I were all like, when we graduate from college, we're gonna go get some experience and then we're going to start the women's version of Nike. Of course, they all went and got really good jobs, you know, investment banking.

[Missy Park]

Finance, Right, Sure, Finance.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Procter and Gamble, Microsoft. And I was the only one that actually ended up not getting one of those good jobs. So I had to figure out something else to do.

[Missy Park]

All right, you graduate around 84, and from what I gather, you wanted. You decided that you would go into coaching, that maybe you would like, explore becoming a professional coach of some sort.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Right. I was lucky enough to be offered a job at our arch rival at Harvard. And Then I found it very difficult to coach against my former teammates, and a job opened up at Yale the following year. But I think I realized at that point that coaching a team was never gonna be the same thing as playing on a team.

[Missy Park]

Yeah. There's a book by David Epstein called the Sports Gene, and he makes an analogy between a player and a coach. And the analogy is, just because you're a bird, it doesn't mean you can be an ornithologist. And I think that's right.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, yes, correct.

[Missy Park]

And I think that's all right. So you realize that college or basketball coaching is not the right fit for you. And it's the mid-80s. You're from Greenville, South Carolina. You're living in New England. What got you out to the West Coast? What was it?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I knew I didn't want to live in the South.

[Missy Park]

Okay.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I knew I didn't want to be cold.

[Missy Park]

Fair enough.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I knew I didn't have any money. My brother lived in California, So I packed up my. I had a Toyota pickup truck. I packed up all of my worldly belongings. And my parents had given me a tent for graduation from college because they knew exactly what I would want.

[Missy Park]

A tent.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

That's a good thing, right? Like, who. What Southern parents? I mean, like, who would do that? Right. But they knew I wanted a tent, so I. In those days, you had to seam seal the tent to seal up all the little needle holes so it wouldn't leak. And I'm unrolling the tent, and I'm taking off the hang tag, and I look at it, and it says, the North Face, 999 Harrison Street, Berkeley, California.

[Missy Park]

Wow.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So I moved in with my brother. I'd also led some bike trips for kids, so I really loved cyc. I was like, okay, I either want to work for a bike company or I want to work for the North Face. So I started just walking into bike shops, asking them about bike companies that were in California and how I might get a job. And one of those bike shops, I ran into a guy by the name of Michael Phillips, who happened to be a sales rep for some old bike brand. And he's like, you looking for a job? He's like, well, why don't you come ride with me in my van for a day while I call on customers? I can teach you about the business.

[Missy Park]

Wow.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, my brother had different ideas.

[Missy Park]

He was like, this guy's creepy. Don't do it.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Exactly. So while that was going on, Michael. And then at the same time, I was kind of trying to Find my way into the North Face. And I had heard at the time that there was another young woman about my age that was leading up the equipment division at the North Face, a woman by the name of Sally McCoy, who was from Charlotte, North Carolina, and had gone to Dartmouth and was a little bit older than I was. I was like, okay, she's the person I need to talk to. Yeah, but I can't get anybody. Right. You know, you're not emailing people. Like, maybe you write them a letter. I don't know what you do. Well, what I do is I find out 9, 99 Harrison street and I walk into the reception area, and I'm like, I'd like to see Sally McCoy. Well, do you have an appointment? No, I don't, but. Well, she's busy. I'm like, okay, well, I'll just wait. So I wait and I wait, and I'm there pretty much all day.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And finally this guy comes down the stairs at jump into the front lobby, and he's like, you know, you've been here a long time. Is there anybody helping you? I'm like, well, no, I really want to talk to this woman, Sally McCoy, but she seems to be very busy. He goes, well, maybe I can help you. This guy's name was Mark Erickson, and he was, I think, the vice president of product. I was super disappointed to be talking to him, but he ended up getting my foot in the door at the North Face, and I ended up meeting Sally McCoy and a really interesting group of business women. And that was really my first exposure to a real job.

[Missy Park]

I mean, it's interesting because you wanted to work for that company. You were a student athlete, and you were really passionate. And one of your principles as a leader is hire for passion. You can train people to do the business stuff. Don't worry about skills or training. Like hire for passion, which I think is 1000% right. Like, people have to believe in the mission of what you're doing. That's more important than anything else. And then you can train them.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, I think that was it. They had this thing that needed doing, and it was very entrepreneurial. You just had such a broad range of things that you could do. I mean, they strongly believed in the it's easier to be forgiven than to obtain permission rule.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So it's a great. And Right. I honestly, you know, I think about it, it was such a good. So the first job I got, strangely enough, was putting together a retail point of sale catalog for them. So it's going to Be like a magazine that was going to sit in their retail stores. I mean, I don't have any skills. I mean, like, literally zero skills. And there I am, I'm working with a graphic designer. I'm working with photographers. I'm going on photo shoots I wrote copy for about products that I didn't really know anything about. Fortunately, there was a lot of supervision. I really wasn't doing all that, but I was sort of the person kind of making sure everything held together in the end.

[Missy Park]

Yeah. And by the way, I think while you were at North Face, you met someone who worked there who would eventually become your life partner. Your wife, right?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

That's right. Actually, how I met her is Sally had recommended that all of the managers. Sally McCoy, the original woman I wanted to talk to, had recommended that all the managers take a look and see if they had any job openings. And Dana, my wife, happened to have one. So I actually interviewed with Dana for the job that she had that I really, really wanted, even though I was colossally unsuited for it. So I did not get the job. But more importantly, I got the girl. And the truth of the matter is that my buddy Michael Phillips, who was not an axe murderer, but ended up being a very good man who mentored me, he actually hooked me up with Fisher Mountain Bikes, and I applied for a job there. I didn't get the job at Fisher Mountain Bikes, but my parents raised me right, and they told me to make sure to write thank you notes. And the person they did hire ended up not working out, and. And they called me and said, hey, the job's yours if you want it. So I went to work at Fisher, which was one of the first, if not the first, mountain bike company.

[Missy Park]

Yeah, I think it was Gary Fisher, right?

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Missy Park]

Yes. I mean, these are all pioneers of, like, outdoor gear, of mountain bike gear.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And I got to work with them and I'm like, 26.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And I think good job experience is wasted on the young. That's what I get. My short version is that. So I went to work at Fisher in inside sales, and that was me calling on bike shops. But suffice it to say, most bike shop guys were not used to having a woman calling them on the phone.

[Missy Park]

So, I mean, you must have really stood out. I mean, here we are talking in 2021. You've been in California since 1985, and, I mean, your accent sticks out, right? I mean, but you really rarely run into people in Berkeley with a South Carolina accent.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

No, I know. Yeah. I think I stuck out for good.

[Missy Park]

Or ill. And you were, from what I read, I think your brother lived across the bay, south of the airport in Foster City. Eventually, presumably, you moved to Berkeley because you were working for. You would work for Fisher and for North Face.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yes, I had a job with a paycheck, so I could afford to have a room and a house.

[Missy Park]

When you were a student athlete. Right. You, I imagine, were already thinking about the fact that the clothing made for women athletes was not well thought out.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Right.

[Missy Park]

While you were working at North Face, you were, from what I've read, you were thinking about this problem that there was no good athletic gear for women.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah.

You know, Guy, it's funny because here's the thing I think about a lot. I mean, I'm assuming you know about the narrative fallacy, right? Like this idea that we end up at a certain place and then we make up this really nice story that proceeds logically from point A to point Z. That's just. It's just. It's just a lie. So I want to tell all this to you, but it's gonna be completely misleading that, like, oh, and then I went to Yale where I found ill fitting uniforms. And then I went to the North Face and was frustrated about. No, I was just. And I guess I think I used to think. To use an old school analogy, I used to think I was the person operating the flippers on the pinball machine. I'm the ball.

[Missy Park]

Right.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

You know, I mean, I think that's. So I'm having all of these experiences.

[Missy Park]

You were bouncing around, right?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I'm just bouncing around. 500 points, free ball.

[Missy Park]

Yay.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Okay, I'm gonna play. I'm gonna keep playing. But so I want to make sure, like, that part of it is clear. This was. I mean, I am not foresighted enough to have planned what happened.

[Missy Park]

And just to be clear, almost nobody who's been on the show is. There's no. I can't think of a single story where somebody said, you know, I was 18, I had this vision, now I'm 55. And, you know, it kind of unfolds over time. And it's like being the ball in the pinball machine.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yes, exactly. And I think that's it, you know, so I can look back and I can see the thread. Like, I can look back on my time as a kid. You know, I'm like 8 or 9 or 10 years old. And at the time, there was basically one sports magazine, Sports Illustrated, and I would go through every single one of them and try and find Pictures of women athletes. And I would painstakingly cut them out and put them on a poster board and have it up in my room. So you could say, like, it was already in me then. I wasn't thinking, like, and therefore I am going to start a women's athletic apparel company.

[Missy Park]

Right.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

But the seeds were there early. Trying to create a vision of what I could be.

[Missy Park]

What was women's sportswear in in the 80s? I mean, Nike had been making stuff, but what did that mean?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, it was kind of aerobics, right? I mean, Jane Fonda, it's kind of. That kind of stuff. I mean, I think about, you know, for me, when you play college sports, you get all your gear given to you. Ill fitting or not. It's given to you, it's given to you. They wash it for you. If it wears out, you get a new one. It's not your concern. Then I graduate from college and all of a sudden I'm having to buy my own gear. And there's nowhere to find anything that's built or designed specifically women. You know, there's no Lululemons. There's no, there's, there's nothing. Literally, there is nothing. And really, I mean, if you think about it, it's just math, right? Title IX was passed in 72. So I was in that first generation. There was no market.

[Missy Park]

What, what was it that. I mean, you're 27 and you decide at that age to start your own business. Were you frustrated working in for a bigger company? Were you just one of these people who had to be your own boss? What do you remember about that time in your life that led you to that decision?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I would say probably that I think about the North Face. I had great jobs, but I'm 26 and I'm like, boy, these guys are kind of idiots. If they can run these businesses, then anybody can do it, you know, because I'm 26 and I know everything.

[Missy Park]

Of course you do.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

You know, so it was frustration. They wouldn't do everything that I wanted them to do. They probably aren't even paying any attention to me. I'm like some entry level person. They don't, you know, they're busy. They've actually got important decisions to make. Where I'm down here seeing and how idiotic everything is. So I'm so confident, Right?

[Missy Park]

I remember that feeling.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah. And I think my favorite part about it is just like. And now guy, I'm the idiot.

[Missy Park]

But you know what, here's the thing. Cause we're both talking, we're both older and we're talking about remembering that feeling. And if you are listening and you are 26, it's okay to think that I'm an idiot or Missy's an idiot, because that's the fuel you need to do something stupid enough to start a business that will ultimately be a good decision.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Right. I mean, those are very like, people say, oh, how did you do that when you were 26? And I have to say, it's the only time to do it.

[Missy Park]

Yeah. And this is 1989, I think, when you decided to start the business. And what did you tell yourself? Did you say, you know, I'm going to start a women's apparel company? Because it's always been on my mind, like, what? How did you describe it to people? And they said, so what are you.

[Guy Raz]

Going to do now, Missy?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, first I did zero market research. My market research was me and my friends, which, let's just be very clear, is a very small group of people.

[Missy Park]

You just said, hey, would you use this?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Hey, you need shorts that fit women, don't you? Yeah, me too. But I had enough to say, okay, there's not enough people in Berkeley, California to support a retail store just for women athletes. So I need to do something that's more national so I can find all the women who need workout and fitness gear. So I did sort of. What is the precursor to the Internet is that was a mail order catalog.

[Guy Raz]

And did you have.

[Missy Park]

I mean, let's just back up for a sec. I mean, what kind of money did you have to start an apparel company? Presumably you had some savings from your.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yes, I did. Job. Exactly. I had like 30,000 bucks.

[Missy Park]

And I can tell you pretty good, sort of.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, I mean, I had 30,000 bucks.

[Missy Park]

That's a nice amount of cash. Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah. Okay. But what people were telling me is, you know, this time, right. This is 1989, and I'm talking to as many people as I could possibly talk to. I'm calling anybody that'll talk to me on the phone, asking them what, hey, I've decided I want to start a mail order catalog. You have started one. And all of them told me, if you're going to do this, you need at least a half a million dollars.

[Missy Park]

To start a mail order catalog business. Because this was 89.

[Guy Raz]

This is how you marketed.

[Missy Park]

You sent out millions of catalogs.

[Guy Raz]

And then hopefully, people or not.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Millions, guy or not.

[Missy Park]

Millions or not. Okay, so people said, you need. You need at least a half a million bucks to make this work. Yep, that's Intimidating.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah. Yeah. I was like, well, I don't have a half a million dollars. I have. I have $30,000. So I call up my dad. I said, so, dad, I'm super excited because I'm got an idea for a business, and the best part about it is that no one else is doing it. And he's quiet for a second and he said, there might be a good reason for that. Missy.

[Missy Park]

When we come back in just a moment, how Missy struggles for months and then years to get Title IX going. And how she discovers the one item of clothing that will give the business a much needed boost. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built this.

[Guy Raz]

I almost always stay in Airbnbs when I travel because it lets me experience.

[Missy Park]

A town or a city, just like.

[Guy Raz]

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[Missy Park]

Hey, welcome back to How I Built this. I'm Guy raz. So it's 1989 and Missy has decided to quit her job and put $30,000 of her own money into launching a mail order catalog for women's Sportswear. And that $30,000 is pretty much all she has to spend on everything, including the clothes.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

But the good news is there are all these big manufacturers and small manufacturers who are starting to think about the coming women's market. Now, the retail stores are not necessarily buying the stuff because obviously they're worried about the customer coming in today, but these manufacturers have to think about tomorrow. So lots of manufacturers were starting to what they used to call shrink it and pink it. And I think they still call it that. They take their men's stuff and they do it over in pink and call it a day and make it smaller. But the good news about that is there were a lot of also small brands of women my age or a little bit older who were also starting to design and manufacture women's athletic apparel.

[Missy Park]

So the idea was that you were not gonna manufacture your own stuff. You were gonna find couldn't afford it.

[Guy Raz]

Right.

[Missy Park]

You couldn't afford it. You're gonna find manufacturers buy their stuff and then put it in the have a catalog and that would be it. And eventually I'm assuming you got connected to probably smaller manufacturers.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yep, exactly. So, yes, we could have gone into Manufacturing. And that probably would have cost me a half a million dollars more. I. An unlimited amount of money. But what I realized pretty quickly is there were enough of these small brands. You know, Pearl Izumi. Moving Comfort was like the first women's running brand. So I started calling on folks like that. And, you know, mostly what I did is. Well, one, again, I don't. I'm operating out of a garage in the house that I have a room in.

[Missy Park]

You're living in like a group house with other.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, I'm living in a group house. And I wanted the cheapest rent, so I got the room that was actually the garage.

[Missy Park]

Nice.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So. Yeah, nice. So I have to go outside to go to the bathroom to come back in the house. Yeah, whatever. And I'm trying to get these manufacturers to talk to me, but they're not going to talk to me if I'm meeting them in my garage. So I would go down to my brother's office in Foster City. I can't remember where he was, and I would meet people there in his office. So it'd be like official. Right.

[Missy Park]

Pre wework, you could.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, way pre Starbucks. Really? Exactly. It was pre everything. So how am I gonna fake this? Yeah. And then finally one of them asked. He's like, so what? What's going on here? And it ended up being the. The sales rep for Moving Comfort. And so then I just said, well, I'm starting and I really. I don't have an office. This is my brother's office. And she was very kind to me. She said, well, look, I'm gonna. I've met you. I can see you're real. Why don't we just come. I'll just come and show you the line. I'll show it to you in your living room. And Moving Comfort was one of the first businesses that, I mean, they became our bank.

[Missy Park]

And they were a manufacturer. Moving Comfort.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yep. A brand like Nike, but a small one.

[Missy Park]

Small one. And they were like, okay, we're willing to work with you.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah.

[Missy Park]

And at this point, I know it's mainly you by yourself.

[Guy Raz]

Right.

[Missy Park]

Actually running the company. But I mean, did you have any help or support?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yes. I just was surrounded by a whole bunch of people who were willing and fired up about this idea.

[Missy Park]

Who were they?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

My teammates. Right. I was playing Ultimate Frisbee. My teammates were my early models. And then one of my teammates happened to be a woman who was an editor at a women's sports and fitness magazine. So she became my first copy editor. She had a friend who was A graphic designer, so she designed the catalog for free. I had another friend who I met playing basketball, and she designed because you had to have a corporate package. I don't know why, but that's what you needed. A corporate package was like a logo, letterhead, envelopes, all these things. You had a brand.

[Missy Park]

They call it a brand bible now, I think.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, you had to have that. So my friend Lisa did it all and threw in a t shirt for $90. Okay, that sounds like a good price.

[Missy Park]

And the name, which is a great name. Was it. Had you thought of that name?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, that was the thing that was kind of hanging me up is I couldn't come up with a name. I've gone through, like, four or five, and somebody had all of them. You know, I was like, oh, it'll be Cheetah Sports, because the female cheetah is whatever. Yeah, faster. And then I remember I was up on Telegraph, maybe walking around Mo's Books or that other bookstore that was right next to it. And I was just looking through books, and I picked up this book, and it was writing about the history of women's sports in America. And I started reading it, and I was like, oh, Title nine. That's what I'll name my. And that was it. You know, no one wanted that name, unsurprisingly, so I named it Title 9, after that piece of legislation that ensured that I got to play sports all the way through high school and college.

[Missy Park]

And you were. The idea was you were gonna sell, like, running shorts and tights and things like that.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, well, remember, the customer was me. So very narrow group of people, but it was me. We had tights, we had running short, we had cycling shorts. We really didn't have much in the way of tops, because you got all your tops for free at the races and the tournaments that you went to.

[Missy Park]

Okay.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I was not a merchant.

[Missy Park]

I mean, it's. It's interesting because today, you know, Title Line is very well known for sports bras for women. But that was not part. Like, you weren't thinking, oh, we're gonna sell sports bras.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, so I put together this assortment of stuff, and it's a tiny little flyer of stuff. And I really do not know anything about the apparel industry. I knew what I was able to glean at the North Face, but I'm just putting. Assembling a group of merchandise that I can get people to sell to me on credit. And then at the last minute, I got in touch with a sales rep who was representing two women who had invented. I didn't know this at the time, but had invented the first sports bra. And. And I'm super flat chested. We're gonna say double A on a good day, so that's an afterthought for me. But this guy, it was a guy. Because most of the sales reps at that time were guys. He says, you know, I really think you oughta put these sports bras in there.

[Missy Park]

And by the way, were sports bras widely used in 1989?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

No. No.

[Missy Park]

I was like, so what did women do? Who were women athletes do for support?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

They'd wear two and three bras. Guy.

[Missy Park]

Oh, wow.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So anyway, as almost an afterthought, we bought some sports bras and we'd done all the shooting. It was all in color. And so I just had time to take some real quick black and white photos. And we put them on what was then called the order form.

[Missy Park]

This is in the catalog?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, in the catalog. And then there's an order form in there. And so I put them in there. And I think we sent out like 15,000.

[Missy Park]

And by the way, I'm looking at a photo, some photos from that first catalog. And it is not a slick production at all. It is.

[Guy Raz]

I mean, it's cool.

[Missy Park]

Cause all the models are women athletes, and they're not like glamour shots or some action shots, but they're very authentic. And these were like. These were your friends?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah. Yep. All like people mostly, that I played Ultimate Frisbee with or went road riding or mountain biking with, or that I worked with at the North Face.

[Missy Park]

So you've got the catalog up and running, and I'm assuming you had to order a bunch of stuff with your. The small amount of capital you had and just hold it in your. In your where? Garage where you lived in your room. Okay. And hoping that some. That it would all be sold.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah. And our suppliers were our bankers. So I would order stuff, let's say, in November, and then I would say I'd like for you to ship it to me in May, and then I would like to pay you in September.

[Missy Park]

Wow.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I mean, it's a little bit of a Ponzi scheme that you hope for.

[Missy Park]

You're just hoping. Hoping some. All right, so you get these catalogs. 15 or 20,000 catalogs. And how did you do? How many orders did you get from those?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So we put those catalogs, and then I'm just waiting for the phone to ring.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And waiting and waiting.

[Missy Park]

Okay.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And I think we got a whopping maybe 15 orders, maybe seven of them were from someone that I did not know.

[Missy Park]

Wow. That's for mailing out over 20,000 catalogs. That's the hit rate.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Super sad.

[Missy Park]

That's crazy.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

But that.

[Missy Park]

But that makes statistical sense. You got it right. Your hit rate is going to be.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

It did not make statistical. It didn't make any sense to me. You're correct. But one thing that I did notice in this, that all of the people that I didn't know, and many of the ones I did know, put a sports bra on their order. And so while I may not have been the quickest study. You don't have to tell me twice. And I realized, like, wow, sports bras. That is probably. Now I know, the most essential piece of sports equipment for the average American woman.

[Missy Park]

Yeah. This is 1989, the year you start. I know that the first four years, it was like really rough, but that first year, not only did you have. You're dealing with like, cash flow issues, but that was the year of the earthquake. The big Bay Area earthquake.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I remember. You know, I remember exactly because I was so relieved there was an earthquake because we were going through the financials. Not to make light of the earthquake at all, but I just. So, I mean, it just is how much the finances weighed on me.

[Missy Park]

Because you were watching not only your bank account dwindle, but you owed people money.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Right. And just kind of, you know, the ways you think about. So we did the first catalog. It went poorly. Saw a little opportunity for sports bras. So I was going to make the most of that. That I could. But I was also, even then trying to figure out, like, okay, how do I kind of get out of this and just go back and get a job again? I can't just quit after one, but I'll do a second one and it'll be super, super cheap. It'll just be like a folded up piece of paper. Yeah, it's like super cheap. So I did a super cheap folded up piece of paper and it did a little better, even though it was a little worse.

[Missy Park]

You were. From what I read, you would order a bunch of stuff and then you would sell it, and then some money would come in and then you would use all that money to send out to order more stuff and then send out the stuff to people who ordered it. So you were constantly out of cash, like every. Right.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yep.

[Missy Park]

It was like cash in and then out. No cash.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Constantly, constantly out of cash. And I remember like two times a year I would be. And even now, I sort of have sort of Stress reactions around these two times of year. It's the time when we're building up a lot of inventory. And, you know, there are these two times when you have invested a lot of money in marketing, you've invested a lot of money in inventory, and sales are going to come. You hope they're going to come, but you don't know if they are. And it kind of two times a year, I'd just be done. I'm just like.

[Missy Park]

You wanted to quit.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah.

[Missy Park]

At one point in those. In the first, I think maybe four years, you were like, $200,000 in debt.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yes. That was a lot of dough.

[Missy Park]

But you were thinking, all right, what could I do for a living?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Right. What can I do for a living where clearly I am self unemployable?

[Missy Park]

And how did you deal with that stress? Did you get depressed? Did you get anxious? Did you lash out?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, Dana actually had a real job and a good job, so her paycheck was supporting both of us.

[Missy Park]

Oh, wow.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So by this time, you know, I wasn't taking any money out of the business.

[Missy Park]

She was. She was only your girlfriend at the time and supporting you.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah. Well, you know, that's a matter of laws or a matter of practice. Right. Because we actually couldn't be officially married until, believe it or not, something like 2012 or 15, I mean, which is crazy. So what would I do in terms of the stress relief? And Dana reminds me of this all the time, because you never get out of that. I mean, we're always in it for the rest of building a business. You have those times. And my solution then was to call my dad, because he was. Whenever I talked with him, he always just had, like, the one good piece of advice that I needed to hold on to. I remember very early on when I was ready to hang it up, and I called him, and I was just like, dad, I just. It's just. It's not happening. I can't learn fast enough. I just don't think I can do it. And then he. He would just go to the business, and he's like, well, tell me about your customers. Tell me about how much it cost you to get a new customer now. How much did it cost you to get a customer this time last year? And he would just find the successes.

[Missy Park]

Wow.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So I think that's the thing, is those little lifelines that someone can offer you. It's not like, oh, and then we got a investor, and I got a million dollars, and everything was fine. It's like, no, there were a Lot of little lifelines all along the road and continue to be.

[Missy Park]

I read. And I don't know how much of a big deal this was, but I did see a reference to a flood that destroyed all the inventory at some point. What was that in your. When you were in the garage.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

In the garage? Yeah.

[Missy Park]

How did a flood get in there?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I. What happened was we had installed some racks in the garage. And by we, I mean Dana, and she's handy, but not super handy. And they probably weren't installed in the most professional manner. So they came crashing down in the middle of the night. But we're not in the. The garage. We're asleep. We don't hear it. And then there's a rainstorm. And, you know, like Berkeley garages, there's just the water swooped up in there. And I think it was about that point where I decided it was time for us to get real office space. I'm like, this is ridiculous. We need to stop doing this.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

It's probably shortly after that, we moved into, again, another converted warehouse, just a. It was next to an ice cream manufacturer, also a small entrepreneurial led. And every morning it would smell like chocolate when I came in. So everything that we shipped out started smelling like chocolate.

[Missy Park]

All right, so those. Those first four years, there were moments where you really were, like, very seriously thinking that this was not going to work out. But I guess around 1993, you guys turned a profit for the first time. This is four years in, probably not a huge profit, but a profit nonetheless.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yes.

[Missy Park]

And what was that the result of? Was it you were just getting sort of better at managing things and more experienced? Did you hire people? What happened?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, you know, what I would say is it's just like staying in the game. Right. I mean, that's just the best way I can describe it. It's just, for me, I'm just like, I'm going to just stay in the game here. I'm going to kind of keep hitting little singles. And I think it's. It kind of goes to. Basically a business philosophy is just sort of fail faster to succeed sooner. And, you know, if you're going to make big mistakes, those take a long time. Little mistakes don't take a very long time. You can make a lot of little mistakes really fast. So I think it was just because we didn't have anybody really until we were over $40 million, we didn't have anybody who had retail experience, apparel experience, marketing experience. We had. Everybody was just true believers, product users that are really interested in Women's outdoor gear and athletic apparel. That's it.

[Missy Park]

I think that the story of Title IX is a story of hitting singles, which is actually a great strategy. Right. And a strategy that you can really only do without having outside investors.

[Guy Raz]

Right.

[Missy Park]

You can't do that if you've got people who expect a 10x return in 5 to 10 years. You can't just hit singles, because no one's going to be that patient. I mean, we've had apparel brands on the show that have raised venture money. Was that even on your radar? Was that ever even anything you. You considered or thought about, or was it just not even something that you thought was an option?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I think it always has to stay on your radar because you never know what's going to happen. Right. But it's never a real option. I think the time I was most aware of how impossible it would be to go out and get investors is we had a president, the first president we had who came in, and Estelle D'Amuzzi. She did a great job running the business. She. She'd done everything. She'd bought businesses, sold businesses, and she came in and ran the business for a while. And I said, you know, somebody contacted me from one of the big investment banks. I can't remember who now. And I told Estelle, I said, would you like to talk with this guy? Would you like us to talk to this guy? She's like, sure, let's do it. Let's do it. So the guy comes, and I'm meeting with him first. I really, literally cannot remember his name anymore. But he comes into the office and I'm talking to him. And Guy, literally, the longer I talk, the more nervous he is getting, as if he has walked into some sort of alternate universe that does not speak his language.

[Missy Park]

What were you saying?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Just about how we, you know, people at one are riding by the door on scooters. So there's chaos. We play a lot of games at work, so there's a lot of stuff going on around. So he's walked into a foreign country. You know, maybe I'm talking about every year we do something called the Title nine Olympics, and we divide up into teams and we play sports together for a day. And people, you know, get hurt. Hopefully not badly, but, you know, we play hard. And that just didn't work in his investment banker mind. Right. And then Estelle came in and she sits down and she starts talking to him. And that guy was so visibly relieved and just talking to her. I just realized I don't even Know the language to talk.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So to answer your question, do we consider it? Yes. Would it have to be someone who is very different from me to really get that deal done?

[Missy Park]

Yes.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

But by the same token, what I would say is if you hit singles, which we do and we're good at, you're not going to hit a grand slam.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

And that's just. You need to make your peace with that. And I think I would take the staying in the game of singles to striking out a whole bunch and every once in a while getting a grand.

[Missy Park]

Slam once you became profitable. Right. And again, it wasn't like buckets of money, but probably profitable enough where you could pay yourself a little bit of a salary.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yep.

[Missy Park]

When were you able to actually hire people and pay them a salary?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Every time someone asks me that, I'm taken back to my own decisions around that and how hard it was. You know, first we just had people who would help us out and volunteer, and then I remember, and this is probably one of the conflicts and maybe something about being a female entrepreneur. I really wanted to go home to South Carolina for Christmas, and the phones were going to ring and people were going to want to place orders and return product. And I wanted to be in South Carolina, and I couldn't be because of the phones. And this was before call forwarding and all the stuff that you could do now. So I had a teammate and I said, hey. And she lived in California. I was like, would you be up for minding the store while I go home for Christmas? And she said, sure. And I said, you know, if it works out, then maybe you can keep doing some work. And so that was really how I hired my first actual paid employee as Renee Thomas Jacobs. We are still good friends. She ended up being our first president, but it felt like a big step. Like, there's who can I afford to do this, or should I just be working harder myself?

[Missy Park]

When we come back in just a moment, Title IX keeps hitting singles until Missy makes some miscalculations and the company suddenly finds. Finds itself in a slump. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built this.

[Guy Raz]

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[Missy Park]

Hey, welcome back to How I Built this. I'm Guy Raz. So it's the mid-1990s and Title IX has only just become profitable and Missy is still running the company on a shoestring and still looking for ways to get new customers.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

The way we did it is the old fashioned way. You know, we went to a lot of races and, you know, tournaments and we would sell stuff like our excess inventory we would sell there and we would build up our mailing list by doing that. And then the hard work of building a customer function, you know, selling people a sports bra, selling a woman a sports bra she can't do without and you earn her trust on that and she comes back to you for all of her athletic apparel needs. And to this day I would say that we are much better at keeping our customers than we are at acquiring new ones. That's just always and I think that's again that sort of bootstrapping hitting singles. You know, our customers know that we get them, that we're product users and product testers so that once they find us, they stay with us for a long time. But it's not like we're going out there and we're going to do a hundred million dollar marketing campaign that's going to net us a whole bunch more new customers all at once. That's just never been the model.

[Missy Park]

Was that ever. Was it always designed to be a direct. Because this was a direct to consumer business from the beginning.

[Guy Raz]

Was it.

[Missy Park]

Was that the model from the beginning? Did you ever think, you know, maybe we'll do a collaboration with, you know, Macy's or something?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

You know, I think we just weren't sophisticated. I wasn't sophisticated enough to think like that. I was just, I want to control everything that I can. I know it's a delusion, but I still want to control it. Right. I mean, certainly people propose them, but I just couldn't. Again, remember, we're mostly selling other people's brands at this point.

[Missy Park]

Yeah. But with Title IX on it or was. No, it's just with whatever brand it was.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Whatever brand it was.

[Missy Park]

Got it. Okay. And I guess eventually, like eight years in or something, you finally opened up a store, like a brick and mortar store in Berkeley. And what's interesting to me is today we're looking at the women's apparel market. And it's enormous. Right. Like, you really are the pioneer. You really created this category with Title ix. I mean, this is long before Lululemon or Athleta or Outdoor Voices, any of those existed. At that point, eight years in, did people get it or was it still a curiosity?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

You know what the most incredible statistic about that first store was? The amazing thing about that store was that over 50% of the customers that came to that store came from more than two hours away.

[Missy Park]

Wow. Who were they? Were they high school athletes, college athletes? Non.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Just women that want to work out.

[Guy Raz]

What age ranges were you?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I would say probably we think of our customers sort of like that 30 to 50 age range. And it was pretty much that then as well. You know, they're not. They have some disposable income because, you know, at that point, direct or E Comm wasn't as big a thing that very few people were willing to buy something sight unseen.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

But what we found mostly was people were coming from all over the country.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

They were flying to SFO and they would come to our store. So we were really looking for that woman who is in the workforce now and is coming into her own, either in aerobic studios or, you know, in the outdoors and needs to find the gear that works for her.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

The second piece, though, I will say is our sports bra business ended up. There was a small piece of that that ended up being a big part of our business to high school and college athletes. Even now we have a lot of mother, daughter, first Trips to buy sports bras happen at our retail stores.

[Guy Raz]

I wonder.

[Missy Park]

You know, one of the. It's interesting because I've heard you describe a low point in your career as a leader was during your first maternity leave, because obviously, you were incredibly overjoyed at the birth of your first child. You were 37. You. You had a very difficult, long labor, and you just decided that you were the CEO and the founder and that you didn't want to take a long leave, that you were back in the office pretty soon after the birth of your daughter.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, and I think that's a little bit of a hero complex there. Right. The business was doing well. I was still running the business at that point, but the business was doing well enough. But, you know, I mean, that's the thing about running a business. You get so much positive reinforcement, especially if you're the founder, owner, entrepreneur. You've done every job, you know all the answers. And then I suppose there's something about like, wow, a new mom. I don't know any answers. I think I'd rather go back to the place where I know answers. I mean, if, you know, you want me to get into sort of the psychological underpinnings of that choice. You know, I have this picture. It's like a Polaroid of Gilly. So she comes to the office with.

[Missy Park]

Me when she was a newborn.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah. Yeah. Really young. And she's all, like, swaddled, and she's on one of those spinny chairs, like spinny rolly chairs. And she's just lying there all swaddled up, like, right on the chair, and there's no one around. I'm like, huh? But I think I needed to have that and realize, like, wow, that really. That's really screwed up. I got to do better. But then I think now, when people talk about work, life, balance, I think, you know, there's really no such thing as balance. If you want to do something really great, whether that's be a great mom or be a great entrepreneur or a great business person, you're really going to have to dig in and have a lot of imbalance for a while. But it always has to flip back. We're going to ride. There's going to be a teeter totter. Sometimes it's going to be, I am really digging in on work. And sometimes it's going to be, I'm really digging in on home. And then for those ordinary days, hopefully I get home in time for dinner every day.

[Missy Park]

I think around 2000, you started to design and manufacture Your own stuff. How involved were you in the designs?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

I mean, what I would say about us is mostly what we are, and I think you have to be if you're going to be owner operated. We are very opportunistic. So the very first thing we ended up manufacturing ourself was a sports bra. And it was because I found a sports bra that someone else was selling. And it was kind of a passion project for her. She was maybe a yoga teacher and she couldn't find a sports bra she liked, so she made this one. It ended up being a top selling sports bra for us for many, many years. But at a certain point, she decided she was more interested in fitness instruction, understandably, than in making sports bras. So she said, hey, I want to get out of this business. Would you like to buy the rights and designs for this? We called it the Frog bra. And I said, sure. And then she coached us up on how to get into the manufacturing business.

[Missy Park]

Basically. In the 2000s, there was an absolute explosion in women's apparel brands. Lululemon, Athleta, now there's Outdoor Voices. Nike and Adidas are making this stuff. We had Chip Wilson on the show. We had Tyler Haney of Outdoor Voice on the show before. A few years ago, you started this category. You were the lonely voice in the wilderness saying, hey, there is a market for women's athletic wear. But these other brands, which started after you became bigger, very fast. Yes. Did that. How did you. What did you think about that? I mean, did you feel like you were under pressure to, like, compete and to grow faster and to. I don't know, was it frustrating to not get the recognition that maybe you felt you guys deserved?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So kind of in the nicest way possible, what you're saying is, why did you let all those late players come in and squash you like a bug?

[Missy Park]

I'm not saying that.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

No, no. But it's spot on. It's spot on. So I played basketball in college, and I have to tell you, I never played better basketball than when I was having to compete for a spot. So, I mean, I think that having more folks in the field helps us all raise our game. At the same time. I'd say we're. In some ways we're competing on the same game, but in other ways we're not. And to be really honest, if Title IX were a publicly traded company, someone should fire me right now. I mean, that's just the facts of it. They should fire me because the fact is, the sole purpose of a publicly traded company or a private equity backed company is to maximize shareholder value in purely financial terms. And plain and simple, I haven't done that. But I would say that at Title ix, I have. I think we all have always measured this idea of value creation much more broadly. And I think my philosophy, and I think it's all of our philosophy now can probably be summed up with one of my favorite sayings. Not all things that count can be counted.

[Missy Park]

Yeah, I mean you built a business that didn't was bootstrapped, is bootstrapped. You never brought in outside investors so you didn't have to make decisions that they wanted you to make. But there's a trade off, right? You don't explode, you don't go on the New York Stock Exchange. You're not a billionaire.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, I mean, I think it's, you know, when I think about that guy, I think about how this choice that we made and that we remake every day is informed by our business practices. And it's everything from the suppliers we choose to who we choose to hire. I mean, probably the most important way is that we have chosen to mentor up and coming female executives rather than some plug and play C level. Actually, I have to say one of the things I'm still very proud of is that we grew the business from probably zero to about 50 million with not one person that knew anything about retail or apparel or business at all. I mean, it's just like pure passion about women and the transformative power of sports. And you know, we have this pitch fest that we do twice a year for up and coming women run brands. I mean, I am filled up by seeing these women come in and grow their businesses. We share resources and sometimes even finances with these kinds of businesses and we're all stronger and better for it. So it's just a different game.

[Missy Park]

You've been quoted as saying that around 2014 the company had climbed out of a pretty significant downturn. And I'm assuming that, that that was probably connected to the recession. But you said that it was solely self inflicted. And I wonder, I mean, sounds like there were maybe some personnel decisions or strategic decisions led to some rough years.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yes, very rough. When I was a kid, something bad happened to somebody and a self inflicted wound. And I talked to my mom about it. I'd say well, it was their own fault. And my mom would say, well, those are the worst kind. I mean, and I would say that I have a lifetime of the worst kind of self inflicted wounds. Some of the biggest mistakes are people mistakes and mostly they are my own Failures and leadership that negatively impacted team members or the whole team. And 2014-15, while it had its share of people mistakes, I think it was really a failure on my part to recognize how quickly we needed to shift from a print and bricks and mortar model to a digital model to, like.

[Missy Park]

Social media marketing and things like that. Influencers and things like that.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Exactly. All of that. And it's, you know, I mean, it's one of those things where, you know, if a company's been around a long time, it. It has a legacy.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

You know, and that's a great thing, but it's also a challenging thing. I couldn't figure out how to rebuild the organization around digital, and I think I set the team up for maybe the only time in the history of the company where we were not all playing off the same sheet of music. There were folks who were very committed to the print model.

[Missy Park]

You were still a catalog. Primarily a catalog company.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yes.

[Missy Park]

And you can't be today.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

No. It's just too late. No, it's not happening. Don't get me wrong. Print is an awesome secret weapon to have. They're a part of your marketing mix. But in 2014, 2015. Yeah. I mean, maybe they were 80% of the marketing mix. Now when you consider our digital, you consider our retail prints only 30% of the marketing mix. So a dramatic change in six years. But I remember talking to Dana at one point, and I was like, you know, I think. I think we're gonna have to take out a mortgage on the house. And I just need you to tell me that. That you're willing to go back to work if that's so. You were.

[Missy Park]

So you had really, like, the fortunes of the business had kind of reversed, in a sense. Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Brutal.

[Missy Park]

And it was so revenue, sales figures, everything was declining.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yep. Inventory. Way too much inventory.

[Missy Park]

And of course, that's gonna create stress for everybody.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

But in those moments, I mean, we have good people, and I wish I could have been the coach that they needed me to be, and I think I'm getting better at it. I would say that the progress is slow, but I think the lessons that I have to learn now are the lessons of leadership more than they are entrepreneurship.

[Missy Park]

Yeah, I guess those sort of that. I don't want to say dark days. It sounds too dramatic, but the kind of. The downturn led you to eventually to bring on a new president of the company, Johnny Lin, a man, and you had, for the most part, women executives, was hiring Johnny. Did you have paused. Did anybody have paused and say Wait, we're a women's apparel company. Is this the right fit?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Oh, hell yeah. It was a hell of a lot of paws. Yeah.

[Missy Park]

I was trying to be gentle on the question, but, yeah, thank you for.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Being gentle, but hell yeah. You know, sometimes the right woman for the job is a man. And I think that with Johnny Lynn, he was just what I feel like every time we have had a president leading the business, they have been exactly what we needed at the time they came in. We need a diversity of ideas about how to run this business, and Johnny is going to bring that to us. And he is such a good leader. And I felt confident knowing that I wasn't going to be leading the company on a daily basis, that the next person we needed to lead was someone who could build a great executive team.

[Missy Park]

Yeah.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So they could lead long past. When I'm here.

[Missy Park]

You are a retail business. I think you have 14 or 15 stores.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah.

[Missy Park]

And you kind of come out of this rough period and you're back to, you know, I think you hit $100 million and then Covid hits, which was absolutely devastating. Certainly initially for retail, you had to close all your stores. I think. I think store sales accounted for like, 20% of your total business. And that was it.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

20 to 0.

[Missy Park]

0%. 20 to 0. And that's a lot of money. I read that you guys had six weeks of cash in the bank in 2020.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

So sales drop like a rock. We're in the middle of what should have been our busiest season. We should have done about $10 million in sales, and we lost $5 million of sales in the last two weeks of March alone.

[Missy Park]

Wow.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

We had six weeks of cash on hand, and then sales start to come back, maybe in August or September. Of course, we didn't recover the year. We ended up in negative territory, but I would say we made up a lot of ground on it. Now. We've probably worked our way up to that. 85% e. Com and 15% retail, but a bigger number overall.

[Missy Park]

I mean, missy, you've been at this for 30 plus years. It's been, I know, incredibly fulfilling, but a grind. I mean, at some point, and I'm sure you've been approached in the past, but at some point, there will be a moment where somebody says, hey, we want to buy this, and you'll be in a position to decide whether to do that. What do you think? At some point, do you think you would entertain that?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, guy, you are asking me the question that the accountants and the lawyers have been asking me. Sensible. Day one, Right. What is the exit strategy?

[Missy Park]

Right. Which you don't have to answer because it's your company.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

No, I think I'm coming more to what the exit strategy is as I, you know, I couldn't have answered it. It's important, it's absolutely incumbent upon me to be able to answer that question. If I want Title IX to outlast this generation of leaders, I need to be able to answer that question. Question. And the thing that I know is that my goal is to get it in the hand of the next generation of female owner operators. I do not need a liquidity event because of the way we have grown it at this point. We have zero debt, we have zero outside investors. So it is a good spot for someone to come in and be able to earn a seat at the ownership table. And that is my hope, is that at some point over the next 10 to 15 years, I'll be able to pass Title IX on to the next group of owner operators who I hope will do it a whole heck of a lot better than I have. So I am not thinking actively about an exit strategy. I am thinking actively about leadership succession.

[Missy Park]

Yeah, fair enough. Missy, could you ever have imagined when you started this in the garage in 89 as a 26, 27 year old that 30 plus years on it would look something like this? Was that. Could you have envisioned that?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Well, I want to say no and I want to say maybe a little bit yes. And only the sort of frivolous way that a 20 year old might like, we need to start the women's version of Nike, you know, and then once I got around to it, no, I don't think I ever could have envisioned what the work has become and the people. Right. That I've gotten to work with. I'm not sure I really had expectations, to be honest. I was like, this is going to be a fun adventure. And I think that's really when I think about business. It's the great game of business. You know, we're not curing cancer, guy. I mean, so it can be fun. There can be times when it is hard and you take your losses, but it's a great game and it's been a great adventure. So I hope I have a few more adventures left in me.

[Missy Park]

How much do you attribute your success to? The work you put in, the really hard work you put in. And how much has to do with luck? I mean, you had some lucky breaks early on and I mean, of course meeting Dana and that guy who helped you kind of like learn about the bike business and then North Face and meeting the right people at the right time. But also, obviously, there was a grind there too. So how much of. Of those things do you. Would you attribute to the success of the business?

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Yeah, right. It's percentages. It's not binary. It's not all luck or all hard work. It's percentages. And I think, you know, if you want to talk about the luckiest things, that probably had sort of the absolutely necessary parts of it. I had to be a young woman growing up in the 70s and 80s, not in the 40s and 50s. That's luck. I probably had to grow up in a family that was encouraging me to be an entrepreneur, even though that might not be something young women in the south did at the time. That's luck. I had to grow up and not be battling abject poverty. That's luck. So when you look at all those very lucky things and then you add on to it all of the things, the happenstance meetings and. And the people that offered me a hand up, I mean, I'd say it's 90% luck, but then what I would say is the part that I can control is the 10%. That's work. And so it may only be 10%, but I'm gonna work as hard as I can to control that 10%.

[Guy Raz]

That's Missy park, founder and CEO of Title IX. Back when we first recorded this episode in 2021, the company had just written.

[Missy Park]

The biggest check in its history, $1.

[Guy Raz]

Million to the U.S. women's National Soccer team so they could pay their players more money and get them a little.

[Missy Park]

Closer to what the male soccer players make.

[Guy Raz]

And this wasn't for a fancy sponsorship deal or anything like that.

[Missy Park]

It was just a straight up gift.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

A straight pass through to the players. We're not asking. I don't want. And I said, like, I don't want to have a beer with the U.S. women's National Soccer team. I honestly, this is.

[Missy Park]

I'm sure they would buy you a beer, though.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

They might buy me a beer. I do have a Budweiser beer glass with Megan Rapinoe on it. I think that'll do. So it's kind of like I'm having a beer with her.

[Guy Raz]

Hey, thanks so much for listening to.

[Missy Park]

The show this week.

[Guy Raz]

Please make sure to click the follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new, new episode of the show.

[Missy Park]

And if you're interested in insights, ideas, and lessons from some of the world's.

[Guy Raz]

Greatest entrepreneurs, sign up for my [e-mail] or on substack. This episode was produced by JC Howard.

[Missy Park]

With music composed by Ramtin Arablouei.

[Guy Raz]

It was edited by Neva Grant with.

[Missy Park]

Research help from Claire Murashima.

[Guy Raz]

Our production staff also includes Alex Chung.

[Missy Park]

Casey Herman, Chris Messini, Elaine Coates, Iman.

[Guy Raz]

Ma'aye, John Isabella, Kathryn Cipher, Kerry Thompson, and Sam Paulson.

[Missy Park]

I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built this. If you like How I Built this, you can listen early and ad free.

[Guy Raz]

Right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

[Missy Park]

Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music.

[Guy Raz]

Before you go, tell us about yourself.

[Missy Park]

By filling out a short [e-mail] survey.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Being an actual royal is never about finding your happy ending. But the worst part is if they step out of line or fall in love with the wrong person, it changes the course of history. I'm Arisha Skidmore Williams.

[Guy Raz]

And I'm Brooke Zifrin.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

We've been telling the story stories of the rich and famous on the hit Wondery show Even the Rich and talking about the latest celebrity news on Rich and Daily. We're going all over the world on our new show, Even the Royals.

[Guy Raz]

We'll be diving headfirst into the lives.

[Unnamed Interviewee]

Of the world's kings, queens and all.

The wannabes in their orbit throughout history. Think succession meets the crown meets real life. We're going to pull back the gilded curtain and show how royal status might be bright and shiny, but it comes at the extension expense of, well, everything else, like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Follow even the royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to even the royals early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus.