UNTUCKit: Chris Riccobono

Summary

How I Built This: Untuckit with Chris Riccobono

Podcast Information:

• Title: How I Built This with Guy Raz
• Host: Guy Raz | Wondery
• Episode: UNTUCKit: Chris Riccobono
• Release Date: June 23, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz delves into the entrepreneurial journey of Chris Riccobono, the co-founder of Untuckit—a brand that revolutionized men's fashion by popularizing shirts designed to be worn untucked. Chris shares his path from a corporate sales representative to building a thriving apparel brand, highlighting the struggles, pivots, and resilience required to succeed in the competitive fashion industry.

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Early Career and Initial Ideas

Background and Corporate Life

Chris grew up in New Jersey, excelling in sports during high school and pursuing a finance degree at Providence College. Post-college, he joined General Electric (GE) in the medical sales department, a role he endured for nearly a decade despite feeling out of place.

• Quote:
  [05:54] "I was so into it. I wanted to succeed in my life. But I knew it couldn't happen in corporate America." – Chris Riccobono

Exploring Entrepreneurship

While at GE, Chris explored various entrepreneurial ideas, including a wine vlog called "Pardon that Vine" and an online dating service for little people (L4LP). These early ventures, though unsuccessful, kept his entrepreneurial spirit alive.

• Quote:
  [14:19] "That's the problem with so many entrepreneurs is following through and actually finishing it and doing it." – Chris Riccobono

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Founding Untuckit

Identifying the Problem

In 2010, frustrated with consistently finding dress shirts that fit perfectly when worn untucked, Chris identified a gap in the market. Traditional dress shirts were either too long or too short, leading to an inconsistent and often sloppy appearance when worn untucked.

• Quote:
  [17:41] "Every shirt came down to your mid-thigh unless it was an out of spec shirt. And I had one that fit perfectly." – Chris Riccobono

Developing the Product

Without prior experience in fashion, Chris partnered with Aaron San Andres, a finance professional from Columbia Business School, to co-found Untuckit. Their mission was simple: create high-quality shirts designed explicitly to be worn untucked.

• Quote:
  [21:38] "He's incredibly smart, always asks the most questions. He could put together a detailed financial model and a great PowerPoint." – Chris Riccobono

Overcoming Manufacturing Challenges

Chris faced significant hurdles in manufacturing. Initial batches from a Polish factory were subpar, with issues like shrinking fabrics and faulty buttons. Persistence paid off when they collaborated with Bjorn, a Swedish expert, who helped refine their production process.

• Quote:
  [35:06] "If you make 15,000 white medium shirts, and they put them into a washing machine, a massive tank... scaling makes consistency challenging." – Chris Riccobono

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Early Struggles and Growth

Initial Sales and Customer Feedback

Despite manufacturing setbacks, Chris and Aaron sold their first batch of shirts directly from Chris's apartment. Customer feedback was mixed initially, with some using the shirts as rags due to quality issues. However, positive reviews continued to build momentum.

• Quote:
  [32:24] "When people started wearing them and saying they now use it for a rag for their car, that's when it really hit." – Chris Riccobono

Strategic Marketing and Branding

Untuckit gained traction through unconventional marketing strategies, including advertising on sports radio shows like Boomer and the Esiason New York show. Their bold marketing approach resonated with a broader audience, leading to exponential growth.

• Quote:
  [41:55] "You have this tagline, untuck it. Shirts designed to be worn untucked. That's all we had to put." – Chris Riccobono

Expanding Retail Presence

In 2015, Untuckit opened its first brick-and-mortar store in SoHo, New York City. The store's success validated the brand's concept, enabling further expansion to 80 stores and a growing wholesale business.

• Quote:
  [53:52] "The store did so well in SoHo that we opened 90 stores in two and a half years." – Chris Riccobono

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Near Acquisition and the COVID-19 Crisis

Preparing for Acquisition

By 2019, Untuckit had established itself as a significant player in the men's apparel market, attracting acquisition interest from major brands. Chris shared his aspiration to sell the company for around $750 million to ensure its longevity.

• Quote:
  [66:24] "I really believe that this is going to be a billion-dollar brand." – Chris Riccobono

Impact of COVID-19

The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 dealt a severe blow to Untuckit. With virtually no new acquisitions materializing due to global uncertainties, the company experienced a drastic revenue decline of 40-50%, leading to financial distress.

• Quote:
  [69:38] "We are scrambling, what's our accounts payable, what's our debt?" – Chris Riccobono

Navigating Bankruptcy

Faced with mounting debts and impaired cash flow, Untuckit had to declare bankruptcy. Despite securing additional funding from their primary investor, Kleiner Perkins, the company struggled to stabilize during the pandemic-induced economic downturn.

• Quote:
  [70:57] "It was the hardest thing to end. We were days away from selling it for such a big number." – Chris Riccobono

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Recovery and Current Success

Post-Pandemic Revival

Untuckit recovered by restructuring debts and cutting back on inventory. By 2023, the company reported its most profitable year, focusing on wholesale growth and expanding into international markets like Mexico City.

• Quote:
  [75:43] "We are now having a tremendous 25 and we are beginning our wholesale growth." – Chris Riccobono

Embracing Wholesale Channels

Transitioning from direct-to-consumer sales, Untuckit entered wholesale agreements with major retailers like Nordstrom and Macy’s. This strategic move facilitated broader market penetration and sustained growth.

• Quote:
  [76:09] "Wholesale is part of the long-term plan to scale to a billion-dollar brand." – Chris Riccobono

Sustaining Brand Legacy

Chris emphasizes his commitment to Untuckit’s long-term success, aiming to maintain its status as a beloved, enduring brand. He acknowledges the blend of hard work and luck in Untuckit’s journey, underscoring the importance of resilience and adaptability.

• Quote:
  [78:43] "It's a blend. I think there's no question the hard work, my vision and pushing through and just doing it." – Chris Riccobono

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Reflections and Future Plans

Lessons Learned

Chris reflects on the importance of perseverance, adaptability, and strategic marketing in building Untuckit. He acknowledges the role of luck but credits the company's success primarily to relentless effort and the ability to navigate challenges.

• Quote:
  [78:43] "It's a blend of luck and hard work. You need both." – Chris Riccobono

Vision for the Future

Looking ahead, Chris plans to continue expanding Untuckit internationally and exploring new product lines. He remains dedicated to ensuring that Untuckit remains a significant and influential player in the fashion industry.

• Quote:
  [76:09] "I want this to be a brand that way outlives me." – Chris Riccobono

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Conclusion

Chris Riccobono’s journey with Untuckit exemplifies the entrepreneurial spirit of identifying a niche problem, relentless pursuit of a solution, and the resilience to overcome significant challenges. From humble beginnings and manufacturing mishaps to near-acquisition and pandemic-induced setbacks, Chris's story is a testament to persistence and strategic innovation. Today, Untuckit stands as a successful brand that has not only carved out its unique space in the apparel market but also influenced broader fashion trends.

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Notable Quotes

• "I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur in college because I was scared about corporate America." – Chris Riccobono [05:54]

• "We play a role into the casualization of the United States." – Chris Riccobono [43:45]

• "Untuckit is like a Kleenex and a tissue and a Xerox machine." – Chris Riccobono [47:09]

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This summary captures the essence of Chris Riccobono’s entrepreneurial journey with Untuckit, highlighting key moments, challenges, and triumphs that shaped the brand’s success.

Transcript

[Guy Raz]

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[Chris Riccobono]

Well actually when people started wearing them and saying that they now use it for a rag for their car, that's when it really. But you know, it's funny. You know it's funny. I didn't we thought through it and said you know what, we will one day get them back. We'll keep a list of those people and I'm gonna lose X amount of customers. I mean, you didn't have a choice. This is entrepreneurialism. You just have to survive.

[Guy Raz]

Welcome to How I Built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz. And on the show today, how a guy who knew nothing about shirts rolled up his sleeves and started Untuck It, a brand that seemed like a gimmick until it started a trend. Some brand names sound like they could be anything. Uber could be a band, the skincare brand. Jack Black could be a whiskey bull and Branch a law firm. But then there are the brands that wear their purpose on their sleeve. Freshpet, butcherbox, paperless Post. You know exactly what you're getting. And that's the direction Chris Riccobono went with his company, Untuck It. Just hearing the name, you kind of get it. It's a shirt designed to be worn untucked. Simple idea, clever name. Chris has that. It's the best business decision he ever made. But in the early days, it sounded a little gimmicky. Late night comedians rose to it. Chris even starred in the ads himself, earnestly explaining how he just wanted a shirt that looked good untucked. And people laughed. But here's the thing. Chris was right. It was a real problem. So real, in fact, that a few years later, big brands were copying the idea. But naming a company Untuck it was just the start. To get past the gimmick, the shirts had to be good. Chris and his co founder, Aaron San Andres priced them like a premium product, around 80 bucks a pop. And slowly they built a brand. Now, neither of them had any experience in fashion. They made just about every mistake you can imagine, including a disastrous first run of shirts. And for many years, both Chris and Aaron kept their day jobs while running Untuck it on the side. The business was eventually doing so well at one point that it was almost acquired for about three quarters of a billion dollars. That is, until the deal fell apart and almost tanked the entire company. But today, Untuck it is once again thriving. Over 80 stores, a growing wholesale business and a fast growing women's line. And Chris Riccobono, he finally proved that you could build a brand around an untucked button down shirt. Chris grew New Jersey, where his dad was a doctor and his mom was a nurse. He was a standout tennis player in high school. And at Providence College in Rhode island, he studied finance.

[Chris Riccobono]

It's funny, I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur in college because I was scared about corporate America. Got a Lot of anxiety in interviews. My first interview I ever did at Providence, the guy stopped the interview because he could hear my heart beating. Literally said, I can hear your heart beating. Let's just talk now. So I was a very. I was very worried about my career. And I kept saying in my mind, I'm gonna find a way out of this. And that was the way I was always approaching post college. I was gonna get a job, and then I was going to focus on finding my own thing. And I got nervous that how am I gonna work my way through, up through an organization? I'm not a great public speaker. I'm not great at Excel or PowerPoint or all the socializing you need to do to move up. That just wasn't my thing. I knew I wasn't good at it.

[Guy Raz]

You knew that you would get to a company and. Cause I think it was for. You would eventually work for General Electric for quite a while as a sales. In their medical sales department. But you weren't gonna stand out because you weren't the most. I don't know, social and charm, maybe charismatic. You didn't have, like.

[Chris Riccobono]

I just couldn't do it. And I knew it, brother. Right when I started with G. And it scared me because then I started saying, what am I going to do? Like, I am in trouble. I need to be successful. I was so into. I wanted to succeed in my life. I wanted to do something great. But I knew it couldn't happen in corporate America.

[Guy Raz]

While you were at ge, you already knew. Cause you would spend. How many years total would you spend there?

[Chris Riccobono]

Probably 10.

[Guy Raz]

But you knew already early on that you were not gonna really climb up the ladder there.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, just. I couldn't get excited about selling medical equipment. I guess that's what it was. I just. It didn't excite me. All these guys who I worked with, you know, and he had a sales team. It's like 20, 20, 30 people. They all were openly negative about. They thought I was a dumb guy. Like, meaning they would say, he's just not good, or I didn't work hard. All these different things. But the reason I wasn't good is because I was totally unfocused. I was focused on what I was going to do after that job.

[Guy Raz]

Got it. Okay. So you're at ge and I think a couple years in, you decide to do an MBA program at Columbia while you're at ge. So they. A lot of business schools have these executive MBA programs that are like eight. They take, you know, 18 months or. And you take Classes on the weekends and one day a week. And. And by the way, did you. Did you decide to do this because you thought, all right, this is going to help me jumpstart and help me figure out how to start my entrepreneurial journey. What was that thinking behind doing an mba?

[Chris Riccobono]

No, it was very simple. I. I knew I had to progress my career while I worked on an idea to. And I kept striking out with entrepreneurial ideas because I always tell entrepreneurs, you can't just be an entrepreneur. That's not a job opportunity. You have to create an idea or a company or a concept in order to become an entrepreneur. So now I said, okay, now I'm in Colombia. I'm 27. At least I'm progressing this career.

[Guy Raz]

But you're still a ge. It's a steady job, and it's a paycheck, basically, right?

[Chris Riccobono]

Yep.

[Guy Raz]

And I think you were. I think you were already married at this time, right?

[Chris Riccobono]

I got married in 2009.

[Guy Raz]

Right, but to somebody you met in college as an undergraduate, Right?

[Chris Riccobono]

Right, exactly.

[Guy Raz]

Who's still your wife today?

[Chris Riccobono]

Yep.

[Guy Raz]

Okay, so you. You're still doing your job. It's 2008, you've got an MBA from Columbia, and clearly you want out, but you got to come up with an idea. And this is a period of time where we're going to talk, we're going to grind through some of these where apparently you came up with, like, dozens of different business ideas and kind of trying to see which one would work. And I guess one of the first ones was a wine blog or vlog video blog called Pardon that Vine, which was. You would talk about wine. We're going to get to it in a sec. But tell me how that idea came about, because I know around this time, I mean, I. I think a lot of people who know this world might think of, like, Gary Vaynerchuk. That was an early thing that he did.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, it was an idea. It was the only idea I had. So basically put it that way. And all these other little ideas I tried. And I also get very bored easily. So the Columbia NBA got me excited. I was working really hard. So now I'm back doing nothing again, selling medical equipment. No ideas. I said, what do I like? I only like, really. One thing I'm massively passionate about was collecting and drinking wine. And I would spend hours and hours and hours reading about it, you know, and learning all these things that were never going to serve me any purpose other than just I enjoyed doing it. Gary Vaynerchuk. I bought wine from him before he started that blog. I had this little camera and I wasn't sure what I was going to do because I didn't. I was thinking, gary's got a massive following. I'll be a more laid back version of Gary. So I taught myself all this wine. I started filming videos, traveling around the world, tasting wines, interviewing people with this small little camcorder. They thought it's funny. I would go to France and they thought that I was coming in with this big camera crew and I would come in with my mom or my wife with this little camera and they'd have all these high end Bordeaux lined up for me and I would do the. They thought I was important back home. Little did they know 15 people watched the show.

[Guy Raz]

So. All right, so you, you decide to do this. First of all, you, you were into wine. It was just a thing you were into.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, that story is, I was a guy who loved drinking beer with my friends and socializing at college. And I graduated. My wife was still there at the time, or my girlfriend. And I was so unhappy. And my older cousin said, come over to have dinner. And I'm thinking, I'm still not. I'm a young kid. I wanted to be at a bar. I wanted to be. I said, fine, I'll come over to have dinner. And he says, go in the wine cellar and pick any bottle of wine. He said, pick a sparkling wine. So I come up, I bring a sparkling wine up, and he tells me 30 minutes about this wine, where it's from, how he found out about it. We drink it. He said, go down, pick a white. I go down, same thing, Then three more bottles of red. And the storytelling. And, you know, and I had an unbelievable night there, you know, and I said, wow, this is amazing. Like, this is wine is just incredible. Brings family together. And that was the day I became obsessed. I started studying about it, reading about it, collecting it, and that's how I got into it.

[Guy Raz]

All right, so you decide that this could be a cool venture and you called it. Pardon, Pardon that Vine. But tell me, what was the business model? Was it going to be ad supported? How did you think you were going to make money from this thing?

[Chris Riccobono]

I was thinking I could consult. I can go, you know, which I did, you know, go consult, go speak at different events, you know, people's parties, which I did a bunch of. I thought I could build. Remember that's once again right when social media wasn't really out there. I guess it's like YouTube was new.

[Guy Raz]

Was very new. Yeah.

[Chris Riccobono]

What could have happened to me if, if I was better at it and maybe technology was a little better, maybe the goal. I would have been that first influencer. Right. Or what? You know, it just never. I wasn't, that wasn't my thing. But I guess that was the build up. Followers. I remember trying to get followers on Facebook, which there was only Facebook at the time. And that's kind of before it all started. So I think the plan was there. I just didn't, you know. Yeah, it was tough to monetize. That's why I stopped doing it.

[Guy Raz]

This was one of many ideas. I think there was some other sort of more short lived ideas. Like you had an idea for an online dating service for little people.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yep.

[Guy Raz]

Love for little people. L4LP, you actually register a domain.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, I can't get away from this one. Yeah. L for LP with my cousin.

[Guy Raz]

This is a real idea that would basically help people who were born with the certain conditions that make them small, that they could meet other people like them.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah. And another one that I get told that I'm crazy for today because it sounds odd, but back then, once again, the Internet, like all this stuff is new. I mean, an L4LP, if followed through, would have been a successful business. It just, you know, never went. Went anywhere. And that's, you know, listen, that's the problem with so many entrepreneurs is following through and actually finishing it and doing it. And a lot of times I didn't do that because I was intimidated and I never did it.

[Guy Raz]

But there's also the flip side, which is you come up with a lot of crazy, weird, unusual ideas and that will eventually lead to the idea.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah. And that's, it's funny, all these things were happening before it became mainstream today, so it could have worked. Meaning I wrote with my cousin four different reality programs. None of them were ever made. But you're right, the biggest thing is it kept me going, it kept me getting excited, it kept me kind of pushing myself to try to come up with that idea.

[Guy Raz]

So basically the blog, the wine blog or vlog becomes your thing for a while. Cause you would go on to post videos, video diaries about wines. And I'm assuming it was, you know, you would taste wine, you would talk about the wine, how are you? And also traveling and trying wines, how are you doing that? And also doing your day job selling medical equipment.

[Chris Riccobono]

I developed a strategy as a sales rep. I became very close with my customers and I was very open with them. It's funny, I would tell them what I was doing That I was an entrepreneur. They liked me more because of that because I wasn't the guy coming in to try to push them to buy stuff. No one likes a sales rep. I mean, I'm joking a little bit, but you know, they make movies about it. So I was the opposite. I'd come in and they'd look forward to talking to me. What'd you try to do? Where'd you go? What's your latest business idea? So I developed this ability which my managers, I think hated and everyone I worked with that I didn't have to go to the accounts and they still would buy from me. And that's what allowed me to last a cheese so long. Because as much as they wanted to get rid of me, they couldn't because I was hitting my number.

[Guy Raz]

But basically spending as much time as possible on this other project. And were you mainly like looking for value wines? Like talking about wines that people could go buy at this, you know, at the whatever Total Wine or whatever wine store they're going to Costco.

[Chris Riccobono]

What I was trying to do was wine was very. The only word I have is like snobby back then. It's kind of changed. Young people didn't drink wine back then, you know, young people, let's say without money, didn't drink wine. I wanted to show people that I could wear a backwards hat, you know, sitting there in a T shirt and love wine as much as the guy in France does who's wearing a tuxedo teaching about wine. So I was trying to go after that type of person. The other thing I tried to do was, you know, golf is thought of as a way to get ahead in sales. Right. That's always been the case, golf. And that's how to me wine, when I would go into these doctors and I knew what I was talking about as a 23 year old with wine, they liked me, they wanted to go to dinner with me because I knew wine.

[Guy Raz]

I mean this is, it's, it's interesting because the fact that you were doing this and there was actually in a sense helping you was something very real. But it wasn't a business. There was no income coming from this. And now we're coming into this next idea which is, which is shirts, nice shirts that you could wear untucked. Right. Because any, any certainly guys know that when you get a dress shirt, they're long. They're designed to be long because you want to tuck them in and get them as fitted as possible. And so tell me about this was around 2010 you're still a G. You're still selling medical equipment. You're doing the wine vlog. How does this kind of light bulb go off in your head about an idea to make shirts?

[Chris Riccobono]

Well, let's be clear for younger people who are listening to this, this problem doesn't really exist today because everyone's kind of copied and made of a fairly reasonably fitting shirt. In 2010, every shirt came down to your mid thigh unless it was an out of spec shirt. And I had one of those. I had one J. Crew small. I'm a large that somehow is out of spec, and it fit me perfectly.

[Guy Raz]

When you say out of spec, what do you mean by that?

[Chris Riccobono]

Out of spec, meaning it was a large and supposed to fit one way, but it fit another way because it was out of specifications to what the shirt was supposed to be made. If it was supposed to be 25 inches, it was 28 inches if it was. But, you know, if you measure 10 shirts from most companies in a large, same color, same shirt, you'll see a major variance of 2 to 3 inches. Because cotton grows, and these companies don't want to spend the extra money to do the quality control needed to make sure that every shirt fits the same. So if you go into these stores, and this is what I used to do to solve my problem, I'd wander in to the J. Crews of the world and try to find a shirt that somehow fit me at a little bit of shorter length than it than the other ones did.

[Guy Raz]

Right?

[Chris Riccobono]

There's no consistency. Shirts looked sloppy and were too long. And I would always ask my buddies, do you have this problem? Do you have this problem? And they all would light up and say they have the problem. And I never would do anything about it because how in the world am I going to start a fashion brand? I don't know anything about it. I don't know how to make a shirt. I don't all these things that you need to start this company. And finally I went to Las Vegas. I was out with my friends. I think it was a bachelor party. Wore the same shirt four nights in a row. Became a party. A big topic of conversation about everyone's struggle. And I'm, you know, looking at my friends and how silly they look. And I said, I gotta find a way to do this.

[Guy Raz]

You're wearing this J. Crew shirt that was. That you would wear untucked.

[Chris Riccobono]

Wore it untucked because it was a small. And because it was a small, but somehow out of spec, the length of it fit much shorter than A large would have fit.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah. So basically you guys are talking about this with your friends and you were like, hey, I want a shirt that fits. Sort of like a well fitted T shirt. But that's a. With a collar and button. A button down, basically.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah. You know, it's funny. Shirts designed to be worn untucked, everyone laughs at that. That's so simple. No shirts were designed to be worn untucked.

[Guy Raz]

There were not even the ones guayaberas. They're guayaberas.

[Chris Riccobono]

For example. Well, that style shirt. Yes, but that's not what we were making. You know, the oversized, you know, cut off that, which are also too long. But you're right. I would have to deal with many people's negative feedback about that existing. But a nice dress shirt, if you will, or a plaid did not exist and it was never designed that way. And therefore, because you didn't need it to wear it untucked, these companies, not like going back, I know the specs, I'll bring it up again. It was a big thing because companies didn't factor in length. They didn't care. 31 inches, 33 inches, 32, 35. Don't worry about it. You don't even have to QC that. It doesn't matter. They're not gonna notice.

[Guy Raz]

Because you're tucking it in.

[Chris Riccobono]

Because you're tucking it in.

[Guy Raz]

So you're on this trip to Vegas with friends and you start to talk to them and they're validating your idea or your problem. They're saying, yeah, that is annoying. You can't. They're saying the same thing.

[Chris Riccobono]

They're validating it, but with excitement. And usually I'm used to them. When I bring L4LP to them, they say, not gonna work. Or you're out of your mind. Or I bring a video wine blog. They say, chris, you don't know enough about whatever it may be. This one wasn't. Oh, here he goes again. This was like, oh, my gosh, this is amazing. And the perfect. The best example was my partner from Columbia Business School who I brought on Aaron San Andres. We would talk about ideas every day at Columbia. Every day. And he'd hang up the phone 99.9% of the time while I was pitching the idea. This one, he's in an airport in Boston. He sits down. He remembers this. He's told the story 800 times, but he sits down. He said, I'm in. You don't have to tell me any further. I've had this problem since day one.

[Guy Raz]

This is Aaron San Andres. Right. He's your. You had met him when you did your degree at Columbia, and he, I think, was working at Pricewaterhouse PwC.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yep. He was a partner at Pricewater, Pricewater Scoopers.

[Guy Raz]

He was a part. And he. So he was an accounting.

[Chris Riccobono]

He was someone similar to me in that he would also pitch ideas. We always wanted to think of ways to start a company.

[Guy Raz]

He's somebody that you just tell. Why was he somebody you thought would be the right fit to start a business with? Aside from the fact that he had a bunch of ideas, what was it about him that you thought could work with your personality?

[Chris Riccobono]

He's just incredibly smart, always ask the most questions at Columbia. Very inquisitive, very good at multiple things. You know, like, I knew that I needed someone. I couldn't put together a beautiful PowerPoint to go raise money. Just wasn't my thing. I couldn't put together a detailed financial model. And many times there's a guy who can put together a detailed financial model and then a guy who can put together a great PowerPoint. Aaron was very versatile. He could do all that stuff. But when I called him on this and he was that excited, that was the other thing, because I finally found someone who believed in this idea.

[Guy Raz]

You didn't know about how to design a shirt. You're not a fashion guy. You didn't go to fashion institute or whatever. Aaron is a finance guy. So let's just talk first about, you know, in a lot of industries, if you don't speak the language, they don't take you seriously. Like, if you don't know what a hem is or. I don't even know the language in apparel, you know, in this kind of apparel. But they have language. They have a. They have a code that they speak in that you now know, you know, 20 years later. But then you didn't. So how did you eventually find somebody who. Who agreed to, like, make a prototype for you?

[Chris Riccobono]

Well, you're right. Like, I wanted to make sure. I went into the fashion district. I wandered in and out. I brought my one J. Crew shirt. I asked them to make it. They said, I'm crazy. That's not the way it works. I said, please make it. I was meeting with button manufacturers, and.

[Guy Raz]

You'Re talking about the garment district in New York City. You actually went into garment makers and asked them if they could make you a custom shirt.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, I wandered in the street and looked at places that have sewing machines. And I went in and I said, can you make me a shirt that looks like this. You know, I figured that was the first step. I mean, I didn't know what else I was going to do. I didn't know a factory or how to. I didn't know anyone in the industry. So me going in there, I think they were like, who is this guy? And you know, what is he talking about? He wants to make a shorter shirt. And by the way, I went through my whole pitch to people who had been making shirts for years and years and years and years and they'd say, no, you cannot make the shirt that short. That's not the spec of a shirt. And I'd say, what are you talking about? They're like, we have specs, right? If you make it 20 inches across, we then make the length 32 inches. I'd say, I don't want it 30, I want it 28.75 inches. So the length, by the way, 28.75. That's my favorite number in the world. That's. Yeah. On a medium from the. I shouldn't probably be telling people that, although I guess they can measure it, but 28.75. And then they. I was just working with these people. They. Some people told me they can't do it. Some people told me they could do it. Through each person, I met someone new and met someone new. It was really that type of story. So I just learned, it was like I was taking my time. I had a full time job, there was no rush. And I was learning how it took two years to get to market, to finally get that right shirt. But that was the hardest part, is finding how to make the shirt.

[Guy Raz]

All right, so already in year one, I mean, you're kind of doing this R D. Aaron is working at PricewaterhouseCoopers, but he's on board. He's like, I am in. I will, I want in. So what was he doing? He was helping you kind of craft the PowerPoints and build a business model.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, he was building the. Because we had to raise some money, we had to build out a website, we had to, you know, start to think about how to market. So he was doing, he was doing a lot of the financial side of things at the time I was doing the shirts. But I'll tell you things like Untuck it, that name. I came up with that and then agonized it over a year of all these people telling me not to use it. You know, shirts designed to be worn untucked, that took a year. You know, you laugh at this, but you realize why some of this Marketing stuff means something. You know, you want to rush it. Oh, it's shirts worn to be made untucked or whatever. That took a long time. So we were working on things like that. And then raising money was impossible. You know, you go to people and tell them you want to make. You're a medical sales rep, and you're gonna go make a shorter shirt, right? What are you talking about? How's that?

[Guy Raz]

No, it's not a good bet. It's not a good bet, right? Not at all. But before we get to the money side, just going back to you, what you and Aaron were doing, were both of you living in New York City at the time?

[Chris Riccobono]

I was living in. I had just moved to Hoboken, and Aaron was living in New York City.

[Guy Raz]

So how often were the. But how often were you meeting.

[Chris Riccobono]

We meet at a diner, you know, two times a week in the city on fifth Ave. And we just listen. You never believed that this company. It was a shorter shirt. This wasn't technology. This wasn't. I started, I'm gonna work on an Uber app, right? And I'm gonna design it. This was. I'm making a shorter shirt, and I'm gonna try to break into the fashion industry. You never think it's possible.

[Guy Raz]

When we come back in just a moment, Chris and Aaron get a crash course in how not to make a shirt. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built this. My favorite vacations have been to towns and cities where I could also just enjoy living like a local. Shopping in the markets, cooking in my own kitchen, or spending a lazy afternoon looking out the window and reading a book. And all of this has been possible because I usually stay at Airbnbs. Maybe you're planning a trip for a long weekend, or maybe you want to book a stay somewhere warm while you're away. You could Airbnb your home and make some extra money toward the trip. Whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little more fun, your home or spare room might be worth more than you think. Find out how [e-mail] host One of the hardest parts about B2B marketing is reaching the right audience. So when you want to reach the right professionals, use LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals, and that's where it stands apart from the other ad buys. You can target your buyers by job title and industry, company role, seniority, skills, company revenue, all the professionals you need to Reach in one place, stop wasting budget on the wrong audience and start targeting the right professionals only on LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you a $100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to LinkedIn.com built this. That's LinkedIn.com built this. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. How I built this is supported by Ring. With Ring, you can be there from anywhere with doorbells and cameras that help you see more to exciting features that help you know more to the app that lets you connect more see more at the front door, up high and down low with battery doorbell's head to toe Video capture it all all day and all night and get smarter alerts that know the difference between a person and a package right in the Ring app. I use Ring to check in on my dog when I'm out of the house or running errands just to make sure everything's okay. It's awesome because I can see her wherever she's in the house. With Ring, you can check in and be there from anywhere. Some features require a subscription and are available only on select Ring devices. Exclusions apply. Learn [e-mail] hey, welcome back to How I Built this. I'm Guy raz. So it's 2011, and Chris and his business partner have put together about $150,000 to start a new brand of shirts designed to be worn untucked. And now Chris has to get them made.

[Chris Riccobono]

I connected to this guy from Poland who had an office in New York City, and he showed me a bunch of fabrics, looked at 100 fabrics, said, these are the ones I like. He said, I'll make them for you in Poland. No process, you know, no, you know, now you're supposed to do tech packs and big order forms and this and everything automated. I told the guy, I don't know. This is all I got. It's me and my partner. It was such a different time, so they were willing to do this. Today, there's thousands and thousands of people launching clothing brands every day because of the ease of doing it now, you know, with the ability to grow. So back then, it wasn't. So that's a benefit I always say I had. I was lucky at the time I did it. If I was five years later, it wouldn't have worked out, I don't think the way it did or 10 years.

[Guy Raz]

So this guy is a Polish guy in an office in New York, and he had, what, he had his own factory in Poland or he had connections to the factory.

[Chris Riccobono]

He was the broker for that factory in Poland.

[Guy Raz]

And that was going to be cost effective to do in Poland at the time.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, it wasn't going to be the cheapest. I just had no other contact in Asia.

[Guy Raz]

And the shirts were going to be made out of cotton, I'm assuming.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, it was all cotton. Basic stuff.

[Guy Raz]

How many shirts did you order in that first run? How much did it cost you?

[Chris Riccobono]

Probably 20,000. Somewhere around that.

[Guy Raz]

And you were going to sell them for like 30 bucks or something?

[Chris Riccobono]

No, no, we were more than that. I think we were like 78, 88.

[Guy Raz]

Okay, so it was going to be a premium, sort of premium shirt. Right?

[Chris Riccobono]

Well, so we. The funny thing is we made terrible shirts in the first year. Like, I never really got there until year four of making a really nice shirt because I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't even know you had to pre wash a fabric to take out shrinkage. No one told me some of the fabric. We didn't test the fabric. So the arms on our first plaid grew really big after washing and the rest of the shirt shrunk.

[Guy Raz]

Wait, hold on. So tell me about the, about that first batch of inventory. Because, I mean, you say that the shirts were terrible, which is shocking. I'm sure you, you sink all this cash into it. You don't have a lot. When it comes off the, off the boat in New York, you open the boxes and what they. You see right away that they're not good.

[Chris Riccobono]

Well, actually, when people started wearing them and saying that they now used it for a rag for their car, that's when it really. But you know, it's funny. You know, it's funny. I didn't. I thought. We thought through it and said, you know what, we will one day get them back. We'll keep a list of those people, but we'll get our cash back. They'll buy the shirt. They're not going to return it, Right. They're going to. And I'm going to lose X amount of customers. I mean, you didn't have a choice. This is entrepreneurialism. You just have to survive.

[Guy Raz]

You had to sell those shirts even though they weren't.

[Chris Riccobono]

You had to sell them. Yeah, that's the point. And today you wouldn't do that. I loaded my third bedroom up with all the shirts. I bought a UPS printer and we grew from there. I mean, we shipped. I shipped every night from my, from my apartment. But we remained positive because when the guys got the shirts, the excitement, we get paragraph emails from customers who found out about the brand. Thank you so much. I've been looking for this. I can't believe I didn't do it myself. This has been a problem in the industry. No one writes paragraphs to clothing stores. You know, one after another. Every day there'd be paragraph emails, by the way, kept going. The next line that came out, we had. I got the first shirt, I am measuring it out. I see a little thing on the button. I pull the button up and it falls off. I do. I look at the next button and the same, yeah, the same thing. It pulls off. Next one pulls off, I take another shirt. The factory forgot to tie on the buttons the right way on this machine. The machine was broken on every single shirt they made. So we sold them. We followed up with an email to everyone that, hey, we're reimbursing your account. $5. There was an issue with our machine. You know, take your shirt to the dry cleaner and get them put back on.

[Guy Raz]

By the way, these were all being made in that factory in Poland.

[Chris Riccobono]

They were all being made in a factory in Poland.

[Guy Raz]

And, and, and not to knock Poland, because Poland, I mean Poland today, I think would be prohibitively expensive. It's, it's a, you know, it's an industrial, you know, power and it's, it's got manufacturing and it's a EU country. And. But I, my obvious question is, well, why would you keep working with that factory if the shirts they were making sucked?

[Chris Riccobono]

First of all, you didn't have a choice like there were. It's much harder than you think as a company making a thousand shirts or whatever. The shirts we make, like they just don't, they don't even pick up your phone call for a thousand shirts. The other thing is, it wasn't really there. I'm supposed to be submitting this tech pack that has washing instructions, fabric testing, testing buttons. I'm sure they were just, they had a thousand shirts, making no money on it, taking a chance. They're making the shirts and they're sending them over.

[Guy Raz]

I'm just trying to figure out why is this so complicated? I mean, as you know, I'm wearing one of your shirts now. I wear lots of button down shirts. What's so hard? Why is it so hard?

[Chris Riccobono]

There's a reason why I found out that people do not make shirts designed to be worn untucked. Our shirt has to be in spec every time. If it is a inch too short, you can't wear it. If it's an inch too long, everyone else has it. You have to hit it each time. Cotton grows. You know, you could pull down most shirts an extra inch. If you just give it a little tug, it shrinks, it moves, the heat affects it. All these different things. So we had to implement this crazy quality control process where we're washing each yard of fabric, where we're rejecting it if it doesn't hit spec. I rejected a shirt an inch out of spec the first time, and they said, that's not the way fashion works, Chris. They're not going to work with you. The factory will not work with you. And I said, then I don't have a business idea. When you make a. When your name is untuck it, shirts don't even tuck it. And you're talking about this perfect length. It has to be perfect.

[Guy Raz]

Has to be perfect. Okay, But I guess the reason why it's not perfect every time is because shirts are still. There's still a lot of human hands involved in each shirt, right? It's not a machine that's making every shirt. It's not like it's going on a factory line, and it's just a machine that's just cranking it out.

[Chris Riccobono]

It depends. Now, there's some 3D technology and printing and stuff, but.

[Guy Raz]

Yes, you're saying it was still. There were humans with sewing machines in their hands, and they were doing the hems, and they were stitching the stitches and everything. And that was right.

[Chris Riccobono]

Now, think about this. If we're making 15,000 white medium shirts, which we do, and they put them into a washing machine, a massive tank, right? And they dry them and they wash them, and they heat them. If one's too close to the heat and one's a little further or one's. That's the other problem. When you're scaling, it's very hard to make that same shirt at the same length every time. And you have two different people making it and all these different things, and.

[Guy Raz]

Your promise was, hey, it's gonna look great as an untucked shirt, but if it was slightly off or shrunk too much or, you know, or the whole thing gets thrown off balance and there's.

[Chris Riccobono]

No difference, and then we blend in with everyone else, and the idea goes away and we disappear.

[Guy Raz]

Okay, so again, I go back to my question. If that factory in Poland sucked so much, why did you keep working? I guess the answer is you had no choice. They were the only ones.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, we had no choice. And we quickly fixed our pro. I think that that's. And listen, this is now 14 years. But I do know we. So I don't have the exact timeline, but I do know we pivoted quickly and improved the shirts because they got really good in like, you know, this third year.

[Guy Raz]

How did you do that? How did. I mean, did you. Were you flying to Poland to that factory? Or did you basically, at a certain point, imagine you just stopped working with them?

[Chris Riccobono]

I stopped working with them, but I also found this Swedish guy named Bjorn who's still with me today. Older guy, teaches at the Fashion Institute.

[Guy Raz]

How did you find him?

[Chris Riccobono]

I was working with a freelance guy who was not very good. Bjorn walks in for a meeting with him and he throws him the shirt and he says, what do you think of this shirt, Bjorn? And Bjorn destroyed the shirt. Says, the worst made shirt I've ever seen. And then he contacted me outside that meeting because he thought there was something there. Now the good news is. Yeah, the good news is we grew unbelievably slow. You know, $90,000, $300,000, $500,000.

[Guy Raz]

This is year one, two, three.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah. Then, you know, three million 15 and up from there. So that three to 15 was a big difference. But the great thing was we always say this. If I started a company today, untuck it, I would go raise 500 grand, right? You'd go out, you have your marketing plan, you market, you ship all your shirts. If they're bad, it's over. Right now a paid social, social media, all these people back then, luckily we had no money, we had full time jobs and we weren't marketing. So we learned all this. Okay, your shirts suck. Okay. We lost 600 customers. Keep their names though, because one day I'm going to send you a letter and explain that I agree our shirts were terrible and I want to send you a new one on us. Which, by the way, we did that. The only reason we survived is because those years we were so small. So we were able to perfect the serve before we became known. That's what allowed us to go. Right. And by the way, that was across. One of the reasons I think Aaron and I were successful is we did things completely different than they did in fashion. We didn't know what we were doing and we use that to our advantage. Like you launch spring. Everyone launches spring on March 1, but it's 30 degrees. Why do they launch spring on March 1? I guess because they've been doing it for 100 years. You know, it's snowing out and they're showing past. So we were very comfortable with. We are not Just following this blueprint of fashion. Right. We're gonna create our own way. And if it works, it works, and it's gonna work because of that. And if it doesn't, it doesn't.

[Guy Raz]

You had no office, Right. The office was your apartment in Hoboken, is that right?

[Chris Riccobono]

Yep, it was. And we did that for a long. We probably did that till 2015. We were very frugal. That was my plan. I didn't want to fall into the trap of many entrepreneurs of looking to get this big office hiring all these people.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah. So you're doing half a million by year three, and all online, all direct to consumer sales. Three years in, you're talking about 2013. So you didn't need to raise any more money at that point. You were still able to kind of take the. Just operate the business through cash flow. But I imagine as the demand increased, you know, you had to order more stuff. So how are you handling the money? Were you getting loans? Were. You.

[Chris Riccobono]

Know, we had a line of credit, little bit small line of credit. But what happened in 14 was we said, we can't keep going like this. We'll be here forever, you know, growing slow. And let's go market. We got a market. We had 21 grand to spend in marketing. And we called Boomer and Carton New York radio show, the only one we could afford. They said, you need.

[Guy Raz]

It's a sports show, right?

[Chris Riccobono]

It's a sports radio show. They said, you need like three months and 100 grand to see results. And we said, we have three weeks and 21 grand. So we did it. And I remember sitting in LA in a hotel room, first read comes out, I have my Google Analytics up and within. Now people are driving. They shouldn't be going to the site. But within 20 seconds, there's a thousand people on the site.

[Guy Raz]

Wow.

[Chris Riccobono]

And sales going up. Sales going up.

[Guy Raz]

And they read the ad.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah.

[Guy Raz]

And were they like, hey, dude, do you ever have that problem where you, like, want to wear a shirt on tuck, but it looks so stupid? And the other guy was like, yeah, I hate that. It's annoying. Well, now there's a. Was it like that? Was it the exact back and forth.

[Chris Riccobono]

And it would. And it would end very strong. Shirts designed to be worn untucked. Untuckit.com and people were like, must have been, what the heck is this? Because the people would just fly to the site. And then we booked airline and magazines, spent 15, made 45. And we could track this very closely because we weren't that big.

[Guy Raz]

You spent $15,000 on airline magazines. Okay, let's just pause there for a sec because I actually think that's a brilliant idea. And sadly, they don't exist anymore. Most airlines don't produce magazines anymore. But what airline was it? Was it.

[Chris Riccobono]

It was everywhere. The Delta, United, Southwest, we were everywhere. And the only competitors in that magazine at the time were watch companies and fragrance companies. So when people saw us in there, I think thought, oh, my gosh, this company must be taken off. Which, by the way, that opinion from a consumer makes them convert. When they feel that you're bigger than.

[Guy Raz]

You are and you're targeting guys like you, like sort of 20 to 50 year old guys.

[Chris Riccobono]

Initially, when I launched the company, I thought we were going to be fashion forward, 20 to 40 guys who are actually going to take the time and say, oh, I also have that problem. It ended up being our current demo today, and it's fluctuated over the years, but it's 25 to 70 years old, evenly distributed. So pretty much every type of guy. Rich, poor, you know, taxi drivers, Leonardo DiCaprio, Matthew McConaughey to athletes, to construction workers, security guards. That's been why we became who we were.

[Guy Raz]

Well, that's the thing, like for forever and ever, wearing a shirt untucked was. Seemed sloppy. It was like, who does that? Right? And there was a shift, right, that began around this time where you start to see people, you know, wearing untucked shirts or you saw a lot of people who were wearing blazers, jackets, over untucked shirts that didn't look stupid.

[Chris Riccobono]

No, I mean, I say this not arrogantly, but there's no question we played a role into the casualization of the United States. I mean, it's not. You could wear our shirt into La Bernardin in New York City, Laverna Dam being one of the, you know, the nicer restaurants.

[Guy Raz]

Three star. Yep. One of the greatest restaurants in America. Yep.

[Chris Riccobono]

You could wear it with a sports jacket. And no one is saying, I can't believe that guy's shirt's untucked. Right. And that's what we started seeing. Guys were wearing our shirts everywhere and people weren't looking at them being sloppy. Fast forward today. Now, all these golf clubs across America in their guidelines say you can only wear an untucked shirt, you know, when you're in the clubhouse, you know, if they allow shirts. So it started to become acceptable to wear our shirt to work, to wear our shirt, to nice restaurants, weddings, whatever it may be.

[Guy Raz]

Okay, so you guys are growing steadily over the first Three years. And then the real breakthrough is when you have some money to go on the Boomer Esiason show. And I imagine that you picked that show very specifically because it was gonna be guys listening to sports radio. And that's who you thought, hey, this is going to be our target audience.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah. Sports to this day has become one of our main areas, whether it was the Masters or Sunday Night Football. So we started there, and by the way, then we went to Howard Stern very soon after that.

[Guy Raz]

How did you afford that? I mean, that's a massive ad buy.

[Chris Riccobono]

So keep in mind, we raised about a million three, call it. Right.

[Guy Raz]

That's not exact, but mostly from friends and family. Not professional investors.

[Chris Riccobono]

No, all friends and family. And about 53 million. Now, the equivalent. I'm not gonna name brands had raised about 200 million. The only reason we were able to do that is because if we. And the reason you say about Stern, we weren't even nervous. If we spent on Stern, it returned. If we spent on Sunday Night Football, it returned. It always returned. This is back then, by the way. Everything's obviously more challenging today.

[Guy Raz]

And was it just intuitive? Like, hey, I listen to those things. I like those things. Maybe your partner Aaron listens to those things and that was it. Or did you do, like, some research to find out, hey, where. Where should we go?

[Chris Riccobono]

Back then, we were big testers. Test it. Move on. Test, move on. Podcasts became the next thing. Test it. You know, we were in the Journal, the USA Today, New York Times. No one was doing that stuff. They were just doing paid social at that time because that's where the world was going. We, by the way, we had 30 billboards around the country. At one point. No one was doing a billboard, but we had this tagline, untuck it. Shirts designed to be worn untucked. That's all we had to put. We didn't even have to show the clothing. So it wasn't. You got to think about this. It was almost like it wasn't a clothing brand. It was a concept.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah. Let me ask you about the name. I think it works great. It tells you exactly what it is, what it does. You have to explain it. It's one word. Untuck it. But there were people who were like, that's a stupid name. Give it a nut. Like you have an Italian last name. Give it your last name. It'll sound Italian and kind of, you know, Italian fashion and premium.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, we had. Most people hated the name. I came up with it walking out in front of my Parents, Shore House. And I had not launched the brand or even started it. And I said, that is why I'm doing it, because I came up with that name. I'm going forward with this because I love it. Untuck it. Like untuck it is the reason we took off. I really believe that. And by the way, the reason it wasn't sophisticated. That's what people would say. And they're going to think that the product isn't great.

[Guy Raz]

That it's like. Right.

[Chris Riccobono]

And that is, that is the reason I said, we've got to make the greatest shirt you've ever worn. It's got to be perfect. You got to. Because when you open that box, your mindset's going to be, this isn't a super high quality product because it's a gimmick. Right. That's what. But that was my fear. So I needed you right away to say, wow, this is an amazing shirt. And it washes well and it holds up because of the name. That was the negative of the name. The positive of the name is now if anyone's wearing an untucked shirt, people call it an untuck it, period. They just, you know, it's like a Kleenex and a tissue and a Xerox machine. And that, that's, that's a great moment as a brand. And by the way, it annoyed so many people in fashion, which is.

[Guy Raz]

Right. No, I get why they'd be annoyed. Because you're not cool, not part of that crowd. Right. And there's a, there's a snobby kind of elite factor there. Like they're not gonna invite you to fash to the fashion week runways necessarily.

[Chris Riccobono]

And they intentionally didn't all those years. Like GQ wouldn't write about us and stuff like that. Cause they were annoyed that a non fashion guy came up with this name that's not fashiony and people liked it.

[Guy Raz]

So really kind of the turning point really was starting to do these ads and then Stern and then Airline magazine and I mean, with just a million dollars raised, you're five years in and you're still working for ge. I think at that point. Right. You still are actually on the clock with them. And also, how are you just coping personally? I mean, running a startup is a full time plus job. It's a, it can be 100 hours a week. And you were still, even when you hit 3, $4 million in sales, you were still nervous, you still mitigated the risk and held onto your job because you're still worried that this could all unravel.

[Chris Riccobono]

Oh my gosh. It was so hard giving up that job. I had a car, I had a job. You know, like you had your parents, you know, say your wife, you know, are you going to leave? Like, I was scared to say, okay, I officially don't have a job. I am now an Untucket employee. Yeah. The worst part was my. It got bad at GE where it would bother me. It started bothering me that I'd say most people didn't like me. Now by the way, they didn't like me not cause I was a bad guy. They didn't like me because I wasn't doing the. I wasn't going the extra yard doing a quote. Right. I was leaning on people. I was. I wouldn't go to the meeting because I was now, like you said, I mean, I have a business now that by the way, is not doing a lot. It was doing. I could think exactly during that period of time. Let's say it was doing 7 million, 6 million. And I was like, but there's a chance here. So I left in 2015 and I was flying to our sales meeting, which I did not have time for. Cause Untuck, it was now really, really taking that next level. And in the magazine was a big picture of me. Shirts designed to be worn untucked, you know, founded by Chris Riccobono. And when I got there, I guess all the people saw it on the way to Phoenix to the sales meeting.

[Guy Raz]

They were on the plane. They saw you in the airline magazine. Your face.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah. And my boss came up to me who I had a good relationship with him, not the people above him. And he said, I think it's time, Chris. It's gonna be a tough one to explain. That was very scary to me. And I waited till I got pushed out like it was, you're forcing me out of here. And it got to the point I never forget. I was walking to Dunkin Donuts like I do every morning, and I said. And it hit me really hard. I said, this business has to succeed. Now I'm 30 years. If this doesn't succeed, I'm married. And I'm like, I have nothing.

[Guy Raz]

When we come back in just a moment, Untuck, it grows to the point where it's about to be sold for a huge pile of money until all of its suitors pack up and go home. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built this. Can AI predict the source of the next global pandemic? Or at least help convince a Hollywood studio to buy a new screenplay from Scott Z. Burns, the writer of Contagion, with special guest appearances from director Steven Soderbergh, Laurence Fishburne and Jennifer Ely. Don't miss what Could Go Wrong, a deeply thoughtful, occasionally frightening and often hilarious, hilarious Audible original podcast that delves head and heart first into today's burning question. Can humankind and AI actually work hand in hand? Follow Scott and an ever expanding cast of AI generated partners, including Lexter, an extraordinarily gifted, sharp tongued AI as they co write and pitch Hollywood execs the Contagion sequel. Hear what Could Go Wrong now on audible. Go to audible.com whatcouldgowrong the next act begins with a prompt. What does a future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get 10 answers. Rates will rise or fall. Inflation's up or down. Can someone please invent a crystal ball? Until then, over 41,000 businesses have future proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle, the number one Cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform with one unified business management suite. There's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data. When you're closing the books in days, not weeks, you're spending less time looking backwards and more time on what's next. As a business owner myself, I love the idea of having this much clarity and control. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds, hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com built. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com built netsuite.com built hey, welcome back to How I Built this. I'm Guy Raz. So so it's around 2015, 2016, a time when two really important things happened for Chris. The first is he walks away from his GE job for good. And the second is Untuck. It opens its first brick and mortar store in SoHo in New York City.

[Chris Riccobono]

I worked every day on the floor and I saw this reaction to people that this was something special, this brand. I was able to pay myself a small salary and I felt really good. Now, you know, it's funny, I actually thought, okay, if this doesn't work out, I think I could go get a job in fashion. At least I could maybe go Get a job as a. Yeah, yeah. That was the big thing. That I could fall back and now become, you know, an operator in fashion of some sort.

[Guy Raz]

Because you now understood the language, you could speak the language, you understood how the industry worked a lot better. I mean now you're probably almost as much of an expert on shirts and apparel than you were on wine.

[Chris Riccobono]

Right. But I also felt pretty confident at the time. That store did so well in soho that one year in three months that I said, we are now going to open this. That's another X million in revenue. We're going to open five more. And then we opened 90 stores in I think two and a half years.

[Guy Raz]

Wow. But I'm curious in 2015, 2016 and most brands are starting to move online. Right? So why did you guys decide to open up physical stores?

[Chris Riccobono]

The reason I went into brick and mortar was because people always say why did we do it back then? Even though all these people were yelling and screaming about it going away. I had 70% of my emails were I'm not buying you until I touch and feel your product. Part of that was because of our older demo. But we had to do it. If we wanted to be around and exist, we had to open a store. That's when I started hiring more people.

[Guy Raz]

But who was doing all of your before that? Who was doing the website and who was designing? Who was dealing with like fulfillment for example, who was doing that?

[Chris Riccobono]

I had one guy shipping in the storage unit and I would go there an hour at the end of the day. It's funny, I was ironing through 15. I ironed every shirt that I would come home. The worst part of this whole journey for me, the entire untucked journey was coming home after being out to dinner and seeing 75 boxes in front of my apartment door and having to iron them and repack them in the middle right up to the middle of the night. Iron clip em, hang em outside if they. But we didn't hire. We were very lean. Me and Aaron did almost everything until Bjorn. And then in 15 on the way to 15 million, we quickly hired like that's where it turned on. Quick.

[Guy Raz]

Wow. Let's step back cause you officially launched a store in soho. It's doing great. And I think the next year, finally Aaron, your co founder or partner, you bring him on to be the full time CEO. I'm assuming you're just like, I'm done. I don't want to be doing the CEO job. I want to move to another role focusing more on maybe like product and creative and other things.

[Chris Riccobono]

To be honest with you, I recognize that he had a better history to be a CEO. You know, as a partner of PwC. That would give him a lot more credibility when we were going to have to eventually do a big fundraiser, sell the business. I wanted him sitting there as a CEO, but I, I wanted, I thought that was. And I think it ended up being a great decision. It just made. Made sense to the business.

[Guy Raz]

And you probably didn't have any management training, right? I mean, management is a skill that is developed through training largely. It's very rare when someone's just a natural.

[Chris Riccobono]

I agree. And I am not. You know, I kind of. If you think about it, one of the reasons I left corporate America was to be alone. That's gonna sound weird. Was to be alone, working hard. Right? I told you I didn't like feel comfortable in those PowerPoint presentations, in those cocktail hours, in those smooth. Like, I just like to be working, you know, so it was never my. It's funny like Aaron's does most of the talking in those scenarios because I. He's just better at it. He. He kind of went through that pathway to his career.

[Guy Raz]

Let me talk about ads and marketing for a moment because one of your ads is an ad of you walking through soho and you're very serious. And of course you're wearing an untucked shirt and you're saying, I had a problem and then I solved the problem. And I don't think I need to tell you I think it's a good ad. I mean, you're an entrepreneur, you're talking about this idea you had. But there's something about the ad that's polarizing, which I actually don't think is a bad thing. Cuz it got more attention than it probably would have gotten if it wasn't polarizing, like it was a YouTube ad. I mean, this ad has been parodied on Colbert.

[Chris Riccobono]

It's. It was in. So I have Letterman and Seinfeld. Seinfeld, you know, saying I just hate that on Tucket guy, you know, walking down the street all smug. Then Letterman's first. Letterman's first appearance back after not having been on after leaving his first line. Where have you been, Dave? What have you been doing? I've been looking to find a shirt that looked good untucked. You know, that's what. Then you have Kimmel Colbert. Jim Gaffigan has an entire thing in his skit, A very funny, you know, thing about the untucked shirt. All of that. That is amazing. That stuff, it helps you. You're right. Everyone would pick their head up. Everyone would pick their head up and say, what is this lunatic talking about? Why does he care so much about his shirt?

[Guy Raz]

All right. It's 2017. Up until that point, you could not actually get any professional VC money. And this is a time I should mention, we've done these on this show. We've done Stitch Fix, we've done Bonobos, We've done many of the brands that you've mentioned, but also just apparel brands too, that did. Were able to attract money from outside investors. Tell me a little bit about before 2017. Trying to. I mean, how hard did you try to get money from venture capital firms?

[Chris Riccobono]

We were able to grow without raising money, which was very odd. So we were trying to avoid it at all costs.

[Guy Raz]

I see.

[Chris Riccobono]

Okay. I look back, I don't know how it was possible that we opened up 30, 25 stores without having raised money from that initial fundraiser. It really was just refunding the business. And we took some debt. We did take some debt.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah.

[Chris Riccobono]

Our first big fundraise was we went out in 2016 to venture growth funds. And Kleiner Perkins, they do not invest in Untucket type companies. I mean, they invest in Uber, you know, billion. Billion dollar tech companies. Right. That's what. And they were looking at us more like a marketing tech company, an apparel company. And they. I'll never forget they said the reason they invested is that they thought we'd be the next great American brand. I just never forget that we raised $8 million from them. That's all we put on to bring us to our. What would have been our sale in 2020. We would have had $8 million raised or $9 million lifetime. So I thought that was pretty cool.

[Guy Raz]

So Klider Perkins put in. You said $8 million?

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, a little. They put in more, but it was secondary, you know, went to shareholders.

[Guy Raz]

But in 2017, I think you raised a total of $30 million, is that right?

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah. From Kleiner. Eight went on the books.

[Guy Raz]

I see. Okay. So essentially you were able to take some money off the table for the first time.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah.

[Guy Raz]

So you had worked up until that point, but you presumably wanted some security at that point because you had been grinding and always nervous about whether this was gonna go under. And finally you could take some cash off the table and put it away for a rainy day in case it all went haywire.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yep.

[Guy Raz]

So that must have been pretty great to be able to do that.

[Chris Riccobono]

It was a deep sigh of relief. I mean, it Was one of those, you know, the moments that you don't forget. And it was more not cause of the money, it was more of the achievement. Wow, this really happened. I got something out of this. I got something. I started this, you know, silly idea, and I was able to monetize it and say that it worked.

[Guy Raz]

All right. And now they were a minority investor, minority owner.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yep.

[Guy Raz]

All right. By the time, you know, Kleiner Perkins is putting money into the brand and you're hitting, you know, 50 million a year, and you're starting to really build out stores, you know, the other established apparel brands, especially men's apparel brands, clearly have noticed in the first couple years, they had no idea who you were, didn't care. Now you're starting to see, you know, the Brooks Brothers of the world and the Vineyard Vines and some other brands start to make untucked dress shirts.

[Chris Riccobono]

It's funny, a lot of times people ask me, what's been the greatest moment that kind of sticks out for you? And it was the day which you think it would have been a depressing day, but the day that it clicked that every single competitor, Vineyard Vines, J. Crew, Banana Republic, just go on. Everyone led their 2019 spring campaign with shirts meant to be worn untucked. Now, two of them led with. Two of the big ones led with shirts designed to be worn untucked. And we. We had to make them remove that. But everyone, I mean, Vineyard vine set up a section in their store. They're known to be tucked in shirts more than any brand you've ever had. Right. Like shirts that are preppy and tucked in, they had a untucked section in their store. It was. It was kind of a feeling of accomplishment that I started this kind of little idea to Hoboken. And now the whole fashion world, the whole. Those billion dollar brands have been around forever, are now changing their strategy because of us. And I think it drew even more attention to the untucked shirt. And what more do you want when your name's untuck it, right? So it ended up propelling us in 19 to having our best year we had ever had by a long shot.

[Guy Raz]

At this point, you guys are going beyond shirts. I mean, you're starting to get into other parts of the apparel world, right? And today, of course, you do sport coats and trousers and all kinds of things, and you've got clothing for women. But by any account, you're a really successful growing player here. And, you know, you're on par at this time, or maybe even more so that with the Bonobos and the, you know, the stitch fixes and, you know, these big brands that are really kind of emerging in apparel. And there is talk about an acquisition, right? This is about what, 2019 you start to talk about maybe.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, late 2019.

[Guy Raz]

2019. Okay. And tell me the story about the acquisition. Who is the acquirer? What's the story? How does it start?

[Chris Riccobono]

So we just decided in late 2019, we were growing so fast, and we had so much growth ahead of us. We went into England, we had been doing very well in Canada. We had expansion plans across Europe, and we had a growing women's brand with zero marketing. We had a growing pants brand with zero marketing, all these amazing things. And we just decided to go test the waters and. And we had 15 letter of intents coming in at a very, very big number.

[Guy Raz]

You decided to test the waters just because this was a good opportunity time. You felt like, okay. And I should mention the first couple of years, you were profitable, but you were small. Now that you're growing and you're investing in growth, you are no longer profitable, which is normal. But now you felt like, okay, this is maybe an opportunity to get acquired by a bigger brand, you know, one of these big conglomerates or something, because now then they can take it to the next level.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah. And there's two things that I've always wanted with this. I wanted, one, to make good money, and two, I wanted this to be a brand that way outlives me. That's very important. I wanted, you know, this to be a brand that's here for the next 50, 60 years. Right. Or whatever.

[Guy Raz]

I want to thank you for saying I wanted to make money because too many entrepreneurs come on the show and they don't say that. And I think that's disingenuous. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, I did this to make money. I wanted to make money. So many people say, you know, money wasn't really an issue. It was about the mission or it was about the community. And I'm just like, come on.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah. For me, the money is not only because of the money. The money is because, to me, that's the. If this were to end right now and someone sees me next week and said, congratulations, Chris, you did an amazing thing in on Tuck It, I would be like, I didn't really. I never really. So that much sale with the money is like. Like, I did it. I built a brand and I sold it for a lot of money. Like, that's what I say about the money. But also, I do want the brand. And the reason I say that is I really believe that this is going to be a billion dollar brand. I still do.

[Guy Raz]

So you guys went and worked for the bank and put sort of hung your shingle out there, and you had 17 letters of intent. 15 potential. 15.

[Chris Riccobono]

About 15. And we knew the number that we were requiring, which was a very big number.

[Guy Raz]

So over a billion dollars?

[Chris Riccobono]

No, close to it. You know, north. It's probably north of 750 somewhere around there. You know, you probably have an outlier. You probably have a real low one. Right.

[Guy Raz]

And not an unrealistic number with so many letters of intent because you could get into a bidding war.

[Chris Riccobono]

So basically, in my mind, I'm there. I mean, I'm sitting there, you know, weeks away. You know, I'm dreaming of the coast of France. And I was like, it was real. You know, I was. And, you know, if it was done a little earlier, we shut it down because of COVID obviously.

[Guy Raz]

Who shut it down?

[Chris Riccobono]

Everyone. Like, we're. Everyone reached out to us. You know, we're not gonna do a deal.

[Guy Raz]

Like it's all of the potential acquirers pull out.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah. Or I don't know if it was pulled out. I can't. It was more of a. We're not giving you our letter of intent right now. The world is closed.

[Guy Raz]

We're gonna have some time. Okay.

[Chris Riccobono]

Okay. Yeah. I think it shut. When did it shut down? March.

[Guy Raz]

It was in March. It was in March of 2020. So these. All of a sudden, all of these potential acquirers are like, we're going to just. We're going to take a beat here because we don't know what's going to happen.

[Chris Riccobono]

Right.

[Guy Raz]

But you were that close to maybe getting acquired for three quarters of a billion dollars.

[Chris Riccobono]

I mean, so close. And I owned, by the way, a lot of the company because we. When Kleiner put on 8 million, they were very adamant, our main investor, to say, this company's doing well. Do not dilute. Like, let's just raise with debt. So we took on debt because we had a plan, but we had very little cash, you know, in comparison to what you need going through Covid. So that. So the bad news was that was shut down. The worst news was that, you know, now all of a sudden you're scrambling, you know, what's our accounts payable, what's our debt? What's this? We are. Our numbers. Sales numbers are starting to drop significantly. But the biggest thing is, I realize, okay, we have some significant cash issues. Here. And they're happening fast, right? Like, because, okay, now they're closing our stores. Well, that's, you know, it's a big number. Big numbers a month.

[Guy Raz]

What did you see, like, percentage decline from March to April of 2020, do you remember? Like, more than 20%, 30%?

[Chris Riccobono]

Probably like 40, 50% just drops. Yeah. Because it was as. So we would get. My investor would call us and say, I don't understand. Everyone else is doing good online. And we're like, you don't understand because everyone's buying Vuori, right? Everyone's buying non. And by the way, I'm still doing decent amount of revenue with non shirts. The problem is when you have, you know, 40, 50, 60 million less in revenue, you're, you're, It's. The math is very simple. You run out of money. So we got on the phone with a bankruptcy attorney and he's like, you have to declare bankruptcy. This is why bankruptcy exists.

[Guy Raz]

Your lawyer saying this when? In March? April.

[Chris Riccobono]

April.

[Guy Raz]

Wait, how much debt did you have, by the way? Like tens of millions, Hundreds of millions?

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, no, we had like 30, 40 million, but that wasn't the.

[Guy Raz]

And because you had.

[Chris Riccobono]

You couldn't get new debt. So that's the bigger.

[Guy Raz]

Aha.

[Chris Riccobono]

You couldn't go get money because you.

[Guy Raz]

Had 30 million in debt. You couldn't get money. And your lawyer, even though you had this national brand and what, 90 stores, your lawyer was saying to you, you gotta declare bankruptcy.

[Chris Riccobono]

Didn't matter because our. So we had to pay our monthly payment to the stores, those 90 stores, the lease. Right.

[Guy Raz]

The rent. Right.

[Chris Riccobono]

We had to pay that number. We had to pay all our stores.

[Guy Raz]

Some of our stores were probably 20, 30 grand a month in rent, maybe.

[Chris Riccobono]

It's a lot of money. And then we had to pay all of our employees. We had just grown too fast. Too many employees paying 90 stores, a big office, all these things that we needed our money to be coming in. And by the way, our factory accounts payable was huge because we were bringing in product for that year that was going to allow us to do massive volume. We had already ordered it and we had to tell them we can't take the product. And they're like, well, you owe us $30 million or whatever the number is. So the guy. I said, what is bankruptcy? I mean, of course, everyone knows high level. What is bankruptcy? I mean, I didn't know that. You know, oh, bankruptcy, what is it? We. You know what? I probably keep most of my equity. We can't. And then we'll just re. They're like, well, you own nothing. Zero. And you're not going to get paid a dime because they're going to kick you right out. And, you know, there's going to be. With us, there'd be a bidding war. So it's even more painful.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah, but why was your lawyer. I guess your lawyer was.

[Chris Riccobono]

It wasn't my lawyer. It was a lawyer they brought on, who was a bankruptcy attorney.

[Guy Raz]

I see. Okay. And he was saying, look, the only way to save the brand is to. And that meant that you wouldn't, you know, all this debt would go away. But then. And you could walk out of there having banked some money and it would.

[Chris Riccobono]

Have been very, very, very little. Like, they would have, you know, they'd.

[Guy Raz]

Gone after YouTube probably.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, it would have been. Wouldn't be great.

[Guy Raz]

I cannot imagine, even when that was brought up, because you're not a lawyer. You know, most of us aren't lawyers. We don't. When a lawyer says that, I think a lot of people take it seriously. Like, okay, well, I gotta consider this.

[Chris Riccobono]

It was the hardest thing to end. But the problem is you're also dealing with this Covid stuff, which right in that period of time was scary for everyone. Right. Like you're sitting. You know, you can't leave your house. You can't. And by the way, that's not a small thing. I don't mean to. Everyone goes through. Everyone went through something with COVID So many businesses were lost. So I'm not the only one. It just so happens I was days away from selling it for such a big number. That's the only, you know, that it was that kind of super high to super low. So I got on the phone, my partner. We didn't really know what to say or do. I mean, you don't. You didn't know when Covid was going to end. That's the problem. That was what made this so bad. So we called our. All of our landlords one by one. We called all of our factories. Some were great, some we had threatened back and forth with lawsuits, this and that. 90% of them said, we think you're gonna be an unbelievable brand post, Covid. We're gonna hang with you no matter what. So we built up this massive accounts payable. I don't wanna say the number just to survive. We raised some money at a very low valuation. Cause you had to.

[Guy Raz]

Did Kleiner put more money in during this crisis?

[Chris Riccobono]

They did.

[Guy Raz]

They did. Okay. And they probably got a good deal.

[Chris Riccobono]

They did get a good deal.

[Guy Raz]

I just cannot imagine the level of stress that you were under because first of all, you're dealing with just declining revenues. You've got to figure out a quick way to get cash infusion. I believe that you guys had three kids in quick succession around this time. Like over a three year period.

[Chris Riccobono]

During COVID I had four in. Yeah, six years. Yeah. All that was happening. It was. We were there. We made it to a point that it was now, you know, hanging by a thread. There's really only one person I could talk to about it was my partner. Cause I didn't want to bring in my wife and my dad. I didn't want to get them to do it.

[Guy Raz]

You don't want to talk to them. You don't want to talk to your wife or your dad about this.

[Chris Riccobono]

I didn't want. It was so bad, by the way, if the company went bankrupt, I couldn't. I don't want to give too much of my personal life, but I couldn't have afforded my, you know, I had just sold some of the company. I had built a house, and now it was. It was an ego hit, I hate to say it. It just was. You know, your company gets pulled from you. Of course it was a money hit because now you have no money. And by the way, you're not making money. You're not getting a job over Covid. Like, it's just hard. And you have four kids. It was crazy. And it was not because of anything we did wrong. That's what bothered me about it. And there was no solution. You want to know why I didn't tell my wife and father? Because there was no solution.

[Guy Raz]

Yeah, but you kind of start to emerge from COVID And we've had stories like this on the show with other apparel brands where Covid ends. And they're brands that weren't really fit for Covid. Like, they're really more, you know, things that you would wear outside to just look good. And then after Covid, they just explode in growth. And I imagine that once people start to emerge from COVID not necessarily going back to work, but even going out, people started to buy the clothes again.

[Chris Riccobono]

They started buying the clothes again. Now we had no cash, right. Because we're coming out. So we really didn't know what to expect. What happened was we did. We were able to take on some debt to get us through it. That's how we solved our bankruptcy problem. We solved some with cash and some with debt. We cut back inventory. We do good. In 2023, our most profitable year ever in 23, not the growth year where we wanted it to be. Now, long story short, I want to make sure I'm very clear about this because so we solved the problem in 24 and we are now having a tremendous 25 and we are beginning our wholesale growth. And I can get into that in a second as the final phase. But we are. It just took four years. It was a four year hamster wheel that we were in.

[Guy Raz]

All right, so you, you recover from COVID and back now again to. Are you guys getting close to profitability?

[Chris Riccobono]

No, we're profitable.

[Guy Raz]

You are profitable. Okay.

[Chris Riccobono]

We had a profitable in 22 and we were significantly profitable in 23, even though the year wasn't what we wanted because we didn't market. And 24, we were profitable. And this, this year is an exciting year.

[Guy Raz]

All right, you are now, I think for the first time recently, have gone into wholesale, into Nordstrom, into Macy's, Stitch Fix and a few other places. Tell me a little bit about that decision.

[Chris Riccobono]

Well, like I said, I want to be. I want to be a massive brand. You know, a brand that fits all demos. Men's fathers, sons, kids. You have to go into wholesale eventually if you want to scale to that level to a billion dollar brand. You know, we're opening in Mexico City later in the year. Like just so many exciting things. So that's the one area that is low hanging fruit because customers want us, we know that. So they're going to want us where they shop and that's a huge opportunity and it's definitely part of the long term plan. So I can get back to north of where we were, you know, in Covid. Pre Covid.

[Guy Raz]

You know, I'm wondering now, I mean, here you've been through certainly trial by fire, a lot of highs and a lot of lows and building this brand since 2010. Here you are now almost 15 years into this thing. You're obviously super experienced. How do you see your own role playing out? I mean, I guess I imagine that at some point you'd like to hopefully try to see if you could get acquired again maybe. Right. Or I don't know, maybe go public, which is risky too. But I imagine there's a point at which you do exit this thing.

[Chris Riccobono]

Yeah, no, I will definitely want to get acquired and sell and kind of make this an ultimate now it's become. I need this now to get over this. You know, you don't want to be the person who's gonna sell for something and then sell for nothing or sell so now it's like I'm back in that. Listen, I'm more stressed now than I was ever. There was this little period of time in 19 and 20 when I wasn't. Because I need this to happen. I'm, you know, I am. These three years have been very draining and you know, and as Aaron would say the same thing, like we have to see this through. But I'll tell you that any deal that I do, I'll still be here helping grow. I do believe when I say I think this can be an international brand, I really believe it can. I want to be there for it. I don't want to not be there for some of that exciting parts of it.

[Guy Raz]

Chris, given where you are now, you even admit that when you started this idea, it was a one in a million chance of working, of succeeding. Because apparel's hard. It's really hard to build an apparel brand. But it did, it did succeed. And I wonder how much of where you got to now, where you are now and when you reflect on it, how much do you attribute to the work you put in the grind and how much do you think had to do with luck?

[Chris Riccobono]

So I'm a big believer. I'm not someone who denies luck. Luck is so important in every area of life. There's not one successful person who didn't get luck. I think there's a massive amount of luck. I say luck cause I launched it at a period of time where I think it allowed me to make mistakes and to still take advantage of paid social. You can make an argument that isn't luck, that's strategy, that or whatever. But I think it's a blend. I think there's no question the hard work, my vision and pushing through and just doing it. I would say just doing it. How many people just don't do things right? That's. It's crazy, you know, it's draining to be an entrepreneur, I guess is all I can say. But I think it's a mix of luck and a mix of hard work. You need both.

[Guy Raz]

That's Chris Riccobono, co founder of Untuck It. And by the way, remember Chris's wine vlog? Pardon? That vine. He stopped doing it years ago, but the videos are still up on his YouTube channel. And in the last one he posted way back in 2012, Chris is reviewing a Syrah from New Zealand and what he's wearing an early version of an untuck it button down shirt. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the Follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And sign up for my [e-mail] or on substack. This episode was produced by JC Howard with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant with research help from Kerry Thompson. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray and Robert Rodriguez. Our production staff also includes Kathryn Cipher, Karla Estevez, Casey Herman, Sam Paulson, Alex Chung, Andrea Bruce, and Elaine Coates. 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 right now by joining Wondery plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short [e-mail] survey.

[Chris Riccobono]

This is a call to the leaders who want to redefine their impact.

[Guy Raz]

Tackle our world's greatest challenges with a powerful network of global business leaders at MIT Sloan School of Management.