← The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan
591: They Made $3.4 BILLION Giving Away Free Clothes | Bombas (Best of Foundr)
00:43:08
David Heath and Randy Goldberg turned Bombas from a scrappy Indiegogo campaign into the most successful Shark Tank investment of all time—now valued at $3.4 billion.
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- [00:02]
Nathan Chan
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- [01:34]
David Heath
Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship. Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.
- [01:48]
Nathan Chan
First question I ask everyone that comes on is, how did you guys get your job? AKA how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today does feel.
- [01:57]
Randy Goldberg
Like a job sometimes. It's funny to say that, you know.
- [02:00]
David Heath
Yeah, I don't ever really think of this as our job. Right.
- [02:03]
Randy Goldberg
Well, sometimes I feel like I work for every. A different person every week at the company. Or it's like, God, this week really.
- [02:09]
David Heath
Feels like I work for Kate or.
- [02:11]
Randy Goldberg
Something like that, you know?
- [02:12]
David Heath
Yeah, I think. I think our stories are shockingly, somewhat similar. You know, my story is that, you know, I grew up in a family of entrepreneurs. My dad's an entrepreneur, first generation immigrant. I watched him build a business in the basement of our house into a multimillion dollar business over 35 years. He just retired at 75. And I think whether through genealogy or osmosis, I was destined to be an Entrepreneur. I was the kid in the neighborhood who had lemonade stands, walk dogs, clean gutters, anything I could do to hustle for a buck when I was, when I was little, I would do. And then, you know, when it was time to go to college, I went to school for entrepreneurship, majored in management and entrepreneurship and marketing. And I think I kind of always knew that eventually I wanted to start and run my own company. I didn't have kind of the eagerness like right out of school to be like, okay, this is what I'm going to go and do, or, you know, I've got some great crazy idea. I think I was like, I want to go, go work for startups and like learn, you know, what it's like to be a part of a fast growing early stage company. And I think that that path ultimately led me to meeting Randy where we were both early stage employees at a media startup. And I'll let him share his story.
- [03:44]
Randy Goldberg
Yeah, I mean, I guess it was sort of similar for me in that my, my parents owned a business together, my father was an entrepreneur and then, you know, I, I guess I had that bug early on. I, I washed cars and shoveled snow around the neighborhood. But I didn't major in entrepreneurship like Dave. I didn't really, I don't know, I guess it didn't think it was part of going to be part of my career path. And I mean, Dave probably knew it when he met me, but maybe I didn't. I don't know. I think we're both pretty entrepreneurially minded, but I worked in the ad world as a copywriter and a strategist and built my career that way after some other weird right and left turns. But we ended up, like they said, working at a company together and we just became friends and I think a shared outlook on the world and appreciation for similar things. Although coming at the work from different disciplines, we made us like good friends and good potential partners. And I think there was a moment where we were like, we're going to do something together at some point. Not sure what it is. It wasn't socks. That wasn't our, we have to start a sock company. Like, that's not, I don't think anyone grows up dreaming of that.
- [05:01]
David Heath
Right.
- [05:02]
Randy Goldberg
But you know, I think you, you talk to a lot of entrepreneurs, ideas come from anywhere.
- [05:07]
David Heath
Right.
- [05:07]
Nathan Chan
So how did this idea come about? How did you guys start Bombasox?
- [05:12]
David Heath
Yeah. So, you know, as Randy mentioned, you know, we became kind of fast friends and you know, spent five years working together and I think during that period of time, you know, we, we had this kind of shared experience at this fast growing organization and commiserated over the things that we thought were done poorly and celebrated the things we thought were done great. But we, we found ourselves oftentimes eating lunch together, going to the gym together. And I think when you spend a lot of time with somebody, especially if you're interested in entrepreneurship, you know, just the randomness of ideas start flowing, right? And you're like, what if we sold popsicles to just children? Like, I don't know. So, like, you know, these, you're like, what? That already exists. It's called an ice cream trap. You're like, oh, right, bad idea. But, you know, you keep your eyes open and are you claiming to have.
- [06:10]
Randy Goldberg
Had the idea for the ice cream truck?
- [06:12]
David Heath
Is that, you know, no bad idea to brainstorm?
- [06:19]
Randy Goldberg
And, you know, so we walked around.
- [06:22]
David Heath
I think, with our eyes open, our ears to the ground, and always looking for opportunity. And, you know, I think like all things in life, opportunity strikes when you least expect it. And I was scrolling on Facebook one day and I came across a post that said socks are the number one most requested clothing item at homeless shelters. And I remember immediately feeling both surprised and sad. I was like, that's upsetting that an item of clothing that I personally never spent more than a few seconds a day thinking about is perceived as a luxury item for hundreds of thousands of people here in the United States and even more so abroad. When I remember going over to Randy's desk and sharing the quote with him and seeing kind of a similar, you know, look come over his face. And, you know, at that moment we weren't like, we've got it. We're going to do a one for one stock company. You know, I think we, we sat with it, you know, we were like, what can we do? Let's go out and buy some socks. And so we carried some socks around in our bags to and from work and handed them out. And, you know, this is early 2011. And, you know, I think the, the light bulb went off when, you know, we kind of connected the growth that Tom's Shoes had been experiencing. They were in their fifth year of business, doing hundreds of millions of dollars. Warby Parker had just launched and took the one for one shoe idea from Toms and applied it to eyewear. And we were like, maybe this is the solve. Maybe we can donate a pair of socks for every pair of socks we sell. But never had aspirations of it being this massive thing. We're you know, this should be a fun little hobby. You know, maybe we'll create some cool, fun stocks, like on our path to our real business, you know, idea. And yeah, we just started working on it and as they always say, like, the rest is history.
- [08:16]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, wild. So Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign, you guys raised $140,000 on there. What, what happened next? Like, how did that happen? Um, was that, was that the, the pilot to launch and, and to really validate the product or you guys had already got some validation and traction?
- [08:37]
Randy Goldberg
Well, I guess we had validation from like our parents and some friends and some strangers at the gym. But this was our first, you know, public moment with the product. This is, that was the whole point of it was, all right, let's see if some strangers are interested in this idea. And you know, we always say, like, when we wrote the script for the video for, for, for our indiegogo campaign, that was kind of the writing the covenant of the Bombas brand. We took three months probably to write that script, and we would probably take three hours to do something like that now. But at the time, it was the wrenching work of making sure everything was in the right order and the ideas were written down and memorialized the right way. And that was an important step for us and it gave us confidence. And then we had that video and we worked that, that campaign like it was a full time job, a lot of elbow grease to create the success in that campaign. And that, that got us to a point where we had a couple thousand people who had believed in it and who had, you know, signed up. And the nice thing about that was we got those email addresses and we launched our website from there and we got it live and we go, okay, now what? So that's sort of a moment, I think a lot of. I talked to a lot of founders where they have that they're fighting hard for something and then that happens.
- [10:03]
David Heath
And then you go, oh, right, like now what?
- [10:05]
Randy Goldberg
And how do you get people to come shop here? And we're like, okay, well, we know email. We worked at a company that was pretty good at email. We've got this list, let's start there and let's build it and let's be smart about where we spend our money, because we don't have any. And let's think about the things that all four founders do really well and let's use those skill sets as sort of free labor until we can afford to hire more people. And it's just a lot, the early work, I think Looks the same at a lot of companies where you're pushing really hard on things that seem so important. And further into it, you get those things become easier and it becomes secondhand. And you're building, you're building work on work that you don't even realize you're doing. And you're building, hopefully the foundation of something great that's appreciated in the marketplace. And good timing has a good fit, and you get a little lucky and you're a little good, and you surround yourself with really smart people and advisors. And, you know, that was sort of the early days. You know, I think sometimes we would look back and be like, wow, we.
- [11:09]
David Heath
Got a lot done.
- [11:09]
Randy Goldberg
And it felt like things were moving.
- [11:10]
David Heath
Really slowly and, and I, I don't think we can underscore that time in the business enough because I think, you know, everybody thinks, look from the outside looking in, you know, oh, it's a total overnight success, right? Like, they just hit it out of the park. They got lucky. And yeah, luck did play a part along the way. But, you know, I think one of the greatest tragedies to happen to kind of entrepreneurship over the last 10 years is this idea that anybody with a idea on the back of a napkin can go raise a million bucks for an idea. And it's especially harder for those that don't have the means or the network or the access. And we did this the old fashioned way. We bootstrapped out of the gate, we built an Indiegogo campaign for $5,000. We, like, put our money together. We, we stayed up late, worked on weekends while we had jobs, you know, you know, putting this campaign together, you know, and then even then, once we had initial traction and success, you know, everyone was like, oh, so you're going to go out and raise money? You're going to raise money? And we're like, no, we got to, like, see if people want to get the product. Did they come back and buy the product? Do they tell their friends about the product? You know, how can we, like, get as far as we can without like, you know, putting anything into this? You know, from a monetary standpoint, you know, and before we. We've done about $500,000 in our first, you know, five months before we decided, all right, like, now we feel like we have validation. You know, we've talked to customers, the feedback is amazing. You know, people want more from us, you know, and we really did. We hustled it out. Like, we did it, we did it the old fashioned way. And, you know, and I think that's a, a key cornerstone to even the way that we grew this company. I mean, a lot of D2C brands, particularly you look at, you know, they've raised 30, 40, 80, 100, $200 million. And we've built our entire business on $4 million of capital, raised the million of our seed funding and $4 million in Series A, mind you, from no venture funds, no institutional capital. All of it was kind of, you know, small checks from, you know, an angel network of different people that I went out and made myself, you know. So we kind of built this thing brick by brick, you know, the old fashioned way. So, you know, you don't need access to tons and tons of capital early on in order to get proof of concept.
- [13:49]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, Love it. Thank you for being so open and honest about this because I'm a big fan of bootstrapping too. And I'm curious with your guys, one for one model, how do you, like in those early days, how did you balance that desire to give back? But while maining profitable, were there many mistakes early days that you could perhaps share with this model? Because as you said, you guys were bootstrapped and haven't raised much capital.
- [14:17]
Randy Goldberg
I mean, listen, a little bit of this was luck in terms of the margin structure of the category that we're in. But from day one, we were donating a product for every product that we sold. It was not. There was no chance that we would compromise that. We understood the power of that and we started this business to help solve a problem in our community. So if we weren't donating, it wouldn't be bombless.
- [14:43]
David Heath
Right?
- [14:43]
Randy Goldberg
It just couldn't. These things, it couldn't exist without it. So when we would meet an investor who would say, you're giving away half of my profits by donating a pair, like Mr. Wonderful said on Shark Tank or a lot of people said this to us along the way. If I had to be honest, I don't know how the donation model scales, but we built it into the unit economics from the beginning. I like to think of it like learning a foreign language. The earlier you learn it when you're a kid, the easier it is and the more fluent you are at it. And you know, you can't remove it later on. You just know French or whatever. So it's the same thing. Because we started so early, because it's so foundational to who we are, you know, the business benefits are clear to us. It's a flywheel for our business.
- [15:33]
David Heath
The, the idea of what it, what.
- [15:35]
Randy Goldberg
It is it's why people are track a lot of our customers. It's the number one reason people purchase our products. You know, it's sort of like it is who we are. So we couldn't, you know, the investors who got it, got it, you know, and, and that was that. And those are our people. And you know, for us it was just profitability had to come with that included. There, there was no way around it. So that just made us figure it out. And listen, if we weren't able to figure that out, we wouldn't be sitting here today. It wouldn't be like we would have abandoned it and just been a sock company, you know, with crazy designs or something like that. That wasn't interesting to us.
- [16:11]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, so it sounds like that that is the core and you guys just made it work.
- [16:15]
David Heath
Yeah, I think, you know, it's interesting. Along the way we've come up against a number of challenges and I think again I look back at our fundraising strategy and because we only took capital when we knew that we could take capital that we could spend to get an ROI and return on investment, whether it was through marketing or through headcount, we weren't doing it to solve problems with our business. Right. We, we said, okay, if there is a fundamental challenge that we have with the business, like we have to be able to solve it without money or else like, you know, we're just going to keep going back to that well every time we have a problem. Right. And it's, you know, it's, I think it's the trap that a lot of venture funded businesses fall into. It just becomes the easy way out. Right? Oh, let's, let's go try this thing. We spend a bunch of money on. It didn't work. Let's go raise more money. Let's try a bunch of things. It's like when you're actually bootstrapped like and your dollars matter, you take the time and caution to really try to like scenario plan or what we call like war games. Right. Internally you run it on a model or you like talk it through to, you know, ad nauseam to you're like, I feel like we are, we are convicted in kind of the right direction. And do you always get it right? No. But like the more time you take, especially in those early days to like face challenges and think about how do, how can you build structure or process or you know, a fundamental approach to how to get past these challenges rather than just throwing money at the problem, it makes you a better business and it also trains that muscle. So that when you do get big, you know, we're sitting here with a. A rather large balance sheet and it just keeps growing because, like, it's not our instinct to just say, like, all right, let's go spend some money on it. See, like, we're like, let's do the hard work. Let's, let's. Let's dig deep and find the answer.
- [18:14]
Randy Goldberg
Ourselves, you know, and like, the, the timing matters there too.
- [18:19]
David Heath
Right.
- [18:19]
Randy Goldberg
If you have a mandate to grow super quickly, that's, you know, like from a VC investor, it could make it challenging not to go chase after some of those opportunities and not to focus on the thing that you're great at and getting better at it. And that's where I think, not having that pressure, allowing our. To take the time and make the mistakes that we made, build the things the way we wanted to build it, go a little slower, figure out when we needed to move a little faster, and ultimately, could we have grown faster? I don't know.
- [18:52]
David Heath
Maybe.
- [18:53]
Randy Goldberg
We've been very fast growth company for the last eight years. So there's probably some. There's. I think we're the sort of proof that you don't have to try and speed through everything and return someone's money immediately. And, you know, if that creates the kind of pressure that creates mistakes, in my opinion.
- [19:13]
Nathan Chan
Yeah. I love how you talk about this idea of these. These constraints. So you just have to make it work and you have anything to fall back on. I'd love to shift gears and talk a little bit about Shark Tank and that experience. Can you take us through what that process looked like in the early stages?
- [19:32]
David Heath
Yeah, I think this is. This is probably one of those moments of luck. But again, I think we created the scenario in which luck decided to knock on our door. We randomly got an email one day and it was like, shark tankcasting40321@gmail.com. and I was like, this feels like a scam. And they're like, hey, would you be interested in applying for Shark Tank? And I shared it with Randy and I was like, this can't be real. And he's like, just reply. Let's see. And so we replied. And it turns out they use, like, freelance casting agents. And they said they were like, hey, we discovered your Indiegogo campaign. We love the mission, we love the brand. Clearly you had some success. You and Randy seem really comfortable on camera. We'd love for you guys to skip the kind of formal audition process and move into the casting process. And we Were like, there's no way this is real. To think back this moment, we're on a conference call with these people, and, you know, every call, it got realer and realer, you know, over kind of a four month period. And it just kind of consumed us at the time. But again, we never. I think we were really pragmatic about it in the way that we were like, look, if this happens, great, you know, but the likelihood of us actually filming and then actually airing and then actually getting a deal, like, we're not going to bet our business on it. That's just like, approach this the way that we approach everything else. Get super prepared, know our information, you know, give it the best shot we can, but, like, you know, set ourselves up to run a great business without it, right? And the thing I think this is another lesson for early entrepreneurs that I hear far too often is that, like, they think that if they just get that one break, that, like, that's all they need, right? They're like, if I can just get on Oprah's favorite things, or if Justin Bieber just sends one tweet about my company, or if I get. It's like, all right, well, you know, you can't bank your company's success on whether you capture lightning in a bottle, you know, randomly, you know. So similarly, I think, you know, we were just like, all right, let's do it. Like we always do. Prepared incredibly well, did our research, watched a ton of episodes, saw the ones that did well, saw the ones that didn't, and just. And just like grinded it out and really did our homework and walked into it. They ended up, you know, in the. In the tank. We got a deal, but weren't sure if they were going to air our episode because they're like, you know, we won't tell you if it's going to air until two weeks before. So, like, you know, just wait and see and maybe it won't at all. And then two weeks before the season premiere, we got a phone call and they were like, your episode's going to air. We were like, cool. We are not ready for this at all. If it's like a janky little website, you know, we had like, no team. We went from zero customer service. I was our customer service person, to like ramping up 40 freelance customer service people, like, overnight. It was intense.
- [22:44]
Randy Goldberg
And our site still crashed. And our site still crashed many times.
- [22:49]
David Heath
Many times. But it was an awesome experience. I mean, you know, we did 900,000 in sales pre shark tank in the first year, and then in two months, we did 1.8 million. You know, it was. It was a massive growth engine for us at the time. Sold out of all of our inventory. Ended up re airing our episode on Black Friday.
- [23:10]
Randy Goldberg
It was a.
- [23:11]
David Heath
It was a massive moment for us in the company. I think a big catalyst, you know, for. For. From a momentum standpoint, for helping us kind of get off the ground.
- [23:20]
Randy Goldberg
Yeah.
- [23:21]
David Heath
Wow.
- [23:21]
Randy Goldberg
You asked about the early part of it as well. The process of preparing for that show was a very helpful process for the business in general. And I think if you're a young founder or a young entrepreneur and you have a business that's growing, I think pretending that you're about to go on to Shark Tank in like a month is a very good, very good exercise because we had to confront the possibility that they could ask us anything they want on national television, and we had to have an answer for it. So if there was something that we didn't. That we weren't talking about or weren't addressing because it was a touchy subject.
- [24:00]
David Heath
Or such a good point, deal with.
- [24:01]
Randy Goldberg
It later, then we had to stand there and talk about it amongst ourselves in case they asked, you know, are you full time? We only want full time people on it. Whatever the question is that you're not addressing with your co founders or with your employees, you know, going through an exercise, certainly force yourself to talk about everything in a series of interviews, even with other people in your company. I think that would be very useful. That was super helpful for us. Even if we never made it to air, I think it helped us address some of the things that would have been issues later on.
- [24:32]
David Heath
Totally great point, Gold.
- [24:35]
Nathan Chan
Okay, so can you tell us about your relationship with Daymond and what is the best piece of advice that he's ever given you?
- [24:44]
David Heath
Yeah, our relationship is great. You know, he. He's been an incredible, you know, mentor and friend to us. You know, interestingly enough, I think, you know, he spotted us early on and was like, you guys have, you know, all of the things that are great about your direct to consumer business. Those are all the things that I see wrong with running a wholesale business, which is, you know, what you had kind of know, been known for. And so every time we kind of call to ask for advice, he's like, you're the new generation. You're the experts. Like, you know, keep leaning into what you're doing. You know, that being said, I think there was a moment, a couple moments in. In the company where we wanted to, you know, maybe expand into other things faster, whether it was, you know, selling into wholesale stores or moving into new product categories. And, you know, he was just like, guys, your business is growing, you know, 3, 400% year over year. He's like, just keep doubling down on what you're doing. It's like, stay focused, stay diligent, you know, and just keep doing the thing that, like, you're doing really well. Like, that's what's going to. That, you know, that's what's going to continue to, you know, fuel your growth, you know, for the future. And if you ever find yourself in a point where growth is slowing, then we can talk about these other options. But, like, don't be distracted. Like, you know, if, if, if it's working for you, just like, keep going at it.
- [26:07]
Randy Goldberg
And then he always says something like, rise and grind, you know, or.
- [26:12]
David Heath
One.
- [26:12]
Randy Goldberg
Of his, like, book titles, you know.
- [26:16]
David Heath
Oh, that's cool.
- [26:18]
Nathan Chan
So just wrapping and rounding out the Shark Tank piece. What advice would you give to founders or any entrepreneur that is thinking about or wanting to go on Shark Tank?
- [26:28]
David Heath
Yeah, I mean, I do think Randy summarized it well. Is that, like, be prepared, you know, go through the exercise and, and whether you're not. Whether you get on it or don't get on it, you know, it's, it's, it's again, a kind of amount going on Shark Tank to, you know, like, saying, like, okay, well, I want Bieber to tweet about me. It's like, it's not something you can control. Even if you get into the application and screening process, I mean, about seven times every call that we had with them, they're like, just because we're talking about this doesn't mean you're going to get on the show. Like, you know, they're really, really careful. Look, we showed up to set with 140 other businesses, and they're like, by tomorrow, 70 of you will be gone, and by the next day, another 30 of you will be gone. So, like, even people that they flew out to LA to pitch would get cut. So, you know, go through the exercise, know your business incredibly well inside out, have the hard conversations, talk about the things that you might be avoiding, you know, and then apply and, you know, hopefully you get on as a crapshoot. But I think knowing your business, again, as Randy said, is probably the best piece of advice we can give you.
- [27:43]
Nathan Chan
Yep. Okay. Switching gears just around E Com. Direct to consumer, obviously, you know, you guys started around the time when Shopify and, you know, a lot of E commerce business Was were. Were starting to pop up. Now if you Fast forward almost 10 years later, that is rampant. Right? So I'm sure you guys speak to a lot of early stage E COM D2C founders. Like, what is, what is the biggest mistake you believe people are making? One of the most common that you're seeing.
- [28:16]
David Heath
Oh, I mean, I'm, I, I could jump in. I, I think that, I think that anybody. I think that one of the biggest mistakes is that anybody believes that, you know, just because something is not sold online that like, that's their opportunity. It's like, guys, you know, there's no branded direct to consumer basketball company. Like, we're going to be the biggest direct to consumer basketball company. It's like, all right, like that just be like, you can't put like, direct to consumer in front of a product and then think it's revolutionary. I think the other thing too, which is, which, you know, we're seeing, you know, at scale is like the, when we started, we started in this interesting, like, moment where the Facebook advertising algorithm was starting to get sophisticated enough, where it was powerful, but it wasn't widely adopted, so it was cheap. Right. When we were first spending money on Facebook, we were getting CPAs for like two to six bucks to acquire a customer. You go out today, just starting today, you're in the 20s and 30s. So brands need to spend so much more to kind of get to that point of realizing, finding out who their customer is or what ad works. We had a tremendous amount of Runway from just being able to test very, very cheaply on, on Facebook to hone in and say, like, okay, this type of customer responds well to this. This customer responds well to that. If we tweak the copy here, we're going to see an increase in conversion rate. But it was so cheap that it didn't cost us a lot to figure that out. If you 10x the cost of that, we would have run through capital so much faster and probably wouldn't have been able on the small budget that we had to get to that proof point of figuring out where our customer buckets were that we could then more efficiently lean in and really pump the scale on. I think they think that. I think what we benefit from today is our size and scale where, you know, we have access to data and tools. And we're working in the Facebook disruptors group. They're giving us access to new ad tools and platforms. And we've got, we've got teams dedicated to figuring out within the matter of minutes if an advertiser piece of advertising, creative is going to work or not. And so it's a. We've kind of crossed the chasm, you know, and again, I think we benefit from a category that has high margin, is a low considered purchase, you know, you know, decision. So, you know, easy for sizing available to everybody. So I think that's some of the pitfalls that people fall out today is they think, oh, bombus is selling socks at scale. Well, I can sell toothbrushes or, you know, hair brushes or any other brushes.
- [31:21]
Randy Goldberg
The brushes and ice cream trucks just right.
- [31:23]
David Heath
Yeah. All day, every day.
- [31:27]
Randy Goldberg
It's a challenging environment. We talk often. If we were starting over right now, we wouldn't do it the same way. It would have to be completely different. So we're actually looking at the next generation of companies who are reinventing how to find their customer base, how to market themselves. Because there was a model in direct consumer brands where it was raise a bunch of VC money, dump it into Facebook. Just transferring money from VC to Silicon Valley, transferring money to try and build up a customer base at a certain price, and then you run out of money and you raise more money. And there's pressures that we talked about earlier. We avoided one part of that and not the other part. We had a lot of success with the other part. But it's a different environment now. So, you know, customers are. Companies are getting smart and figuring out new ways to find an audience, new ways to, like, grind out, like, the brand, you know, like customer by customer and being smarter about it. And now we're trying to learn some of that new language in addition to capitalizing on our momentum.
- [32:30]
David Heath
Yeah, blazing your own path here is, you know, looking at the moment that you're starting and figuring out what's the angle. You know, how many times, Randy, along the years did you have people be like, oh, your million pair video, which was this video we shot, know, ended up being a Facebook case study, you know, has, you know, over a hundred million views online across all platforms. People are like, hey, can I get the name of the director for that video? I want to create that video for our brand. And I'm like, no, it's done, it's over. Like, you can't just do what somebody else just did and expect the same results. Like, no one could look at the dollar Shave club video and be like, I'm going to do exactly that for my brand and have it work. Cause the consumer is like, no, bro, that's already been done before. Like, you're not authentic. You're not real. You're not doing your own thing. And so like, it's like a sequel, right, Dave?
- [33:24]
Randy Goldberg
Totally. Like how many, how many sequels are better than the original? Maybe one, two. Yeah, like, you know, like you gotta do something new.
- [33:32]
David Heath
And even worse when they're kind of like blatant rip offs and we just saw it and you know, people would be like, I don't get it. We did the same thing you did and it's not working. I'm like, exactly.
- [33:43]
Randy Goldberg
Like you got to do something different.
- [33:45]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, no, that's a really good point that you make. So I'm curious, like in terms of channels now for you guys, obviously Facebook ads, it sounds like you guys are doing quite well. Organic YouTube ads, like what are other channels that are working for you guys right now?
- [34:03]
Randy Goldberg
You know, it's funny, it's like the same kind of mentality. We want to look to where there are opportunities and spaces that people wouldn't think about, you know, like, like what are, you know, we're a new direct to consumer company. Okay, let's advertise on the radio, right. Let's send out direct mailers. Let's see what TV looks like for us. Let's explore these places. Like let's create partnerships with very few select retailers, even though we're a direct to consumer company and, and meet their customers where they are.
- [34:32]
David Heath
Right.
- [34:33]
Randy Goldberg
Like we want to find where people are spending their time creating space and intentionality in their day and be there to like provide them with the right message at the time and let them know that we will be supporting them. That's what we do as a brand. We go and find people where they are and we support them. So we have the traditional success. Facebook, Instagram, we're exploring all the new digital platforms and testing and learning in those places as well. But we're not afraid to do things that seem a little bit, I don't know, like older or left of center or experimental just to try and find customers and make people put some bombus in front of them. See what, see what happens.
- [35:18]
Nathan Chan
Yeah, love it. Okay, so when it comes to your mission, how would you recommend founders communicate that to their consumers in the early days, what should they be thinking about when it comes to that? Because your guys, you have a really strong and really purposeful mission. But I think a lot of early stage founders, that's something they don't really approach the best way or they haven't really worked out and they just want to make money.
- [35:47]
David Heath
Yeah, I think Randy touched on this before, right Like, I think why it was so successful for us, but also why it was so easy for us is it was built into the DNA of the company. Right. It was the spark that ultimately lit the flame. We didn't sit there saying like, we want to build, you know, a multimillion dollar stock company and oh, by the way, let's try a way to give back. We were like, hey, there's a problem in our community. How can we solve this? Oh, we like business. Oh, maybe business can help solve this problem. So it was very organic and authentic. You know, if that, if that moment doesn't hit you right away, I think, you know, really digging deep on that kind of or pulling on the authenticity thread I think is super important. Right. Like get close to something and figure out like, you know, how it can create meaning to you personally. Right. I think if you are able to connect to it personally. You know, one of the things that we do at BOMBAS is we require every new employee to, we give them 10 pairs of socks on the first day that they start. And this is more obviously in the in person environment. And being in New York City, we'd say, hey, you're probably going to encounter someone in the homeless community to and from your way to work, you know, hand them a pair of socks, you know, if they need it, offer them, start a conversation and everybody comes back and they all have these very unique, beautiful stories of. I didn't realize, you know, how simply just saying hi to somebody could change their day. Or this guy who I see sitting on the block, you know, I thought he was a drug addict, but it turns out that his wife is really sick and you know, he has to raise the money to take care of her. Like whatever these stories are, which we all, which Randy and I had, I think early on because we said like, okay, let's carry socks around us. We had these individual moments that were just like, I mean, I literally get goosebumps just thinking about it that like, I can't shake these stories. Right. And that allows me to show up super authentically every single day. There's a ice cream, coconut ice cream company that I invested in and she was like, look, I really want to have a mission and you know, maybe I can, you know, do this or do that. And I was like, try to find a way to like cohesively connect it naturally for the consumer. Right. If you're, you're a coconut ice cream company, don't give blankets to dog shelters. Right. Like that would be like, what? That doesn't make Sense at all. But, you know, I was like, do some research. Figure out, like, where it. Maybe there's a moment point in your supply chain that, like, you can help. And it turns out coconut farmers are, you know, typically in third world countries, wildly poor. You know, she went there, realized that they work to try to break the poverty cycle by sending their kids to school, and hopefully their kids will get educated because they didn't have that opportunity. And so then she came back and she's like, all right, we're going to donate a part of our proceeds to help provide, you know, books and school supplies to our coconut farmers. Right? That makes a lot of sense for the consumer. Right. When they see the plaque on the wall when they walk into the store, it makes a ton of sense. And it's an easy story for people to tell. And she can tell it because she's like, I went there. I found this out. It wasn't like, oh, I Googled, like, how to give back. Like, that's not going to resonate with anybody. So you've got to make it personal. You really got to go out there. Don't just, like, you know, look something up online. That sounds good. Like, if it's interesting, go volunteer. Go. Go get close to it. Talk to. We, you know, we didn't know how to donate a pair of socks. So, like, we called a homeless shelter, and we were like, hey, is this sock thing a real problem? And they were like, it's a tremendous problem. We can't get enough. We're like, well, what if we created a company where we sent you socks whenever we sold them that. That you could hand out to the homeless community? They were like, that would be amazing, right? So, like, we understood the problem, right? And that allowed us to talk about the problem to our customers, to our employees, to our partners. Partners in such an authentic and genuine way that they then bought into it because, like, they wanted to be a part of that story and that journey.
- [39:59]
Randy Goldberg
Yeah, that's. I mean, Dave, you're bringing back some memories with Hammoth socks, which is amazing. I also think it's just so important to be able to weave it into the core narrative of your company. If you really mean it, it shouldn't be, like, off to the side, like a department or something you talk about occasionally make it part of your core narrative. When we say one purchased equals one donated, like, that is core to who we are, right? Like, this has always been the way it is for us, and Dave was really big on this early on, is we wanted to make our story so easy to understand that our customers would be out there, like, telling the story on our behalf, and they didn't have to study it to do it. We just tried to simplify the message and then be really consistent about it. Dave always says, like, you know, our product is great. Our mission is authentic, but the order in the which the way people tell.
- [40:55]
David Heath
It is, they'll go to a party.
- [40:56]
Randy Goldberg
And they'll say, have you heard of a sock company, Bombus? You know, did you know socks are the most requested clothing I have at home with shelters, they donate a pair.
- [41:04]
David Heath
For every pair you buy.
- [41:05]
Randy Goldberg
Oh, and by the way, they're the most comfortable socks you've ever worn. And T shirts and underwear and slippers if you haven't tried some of our newer products. But this is what they would say. And that's like the order that it would go in. It wasn't just about, you know, so both parts are important, and the both parts make the other part of the story better. And if you have something like that, where the two plate, two pieces of it, your mission and your product support each other, that's powerful and can be exponential. If it's done the right way.
- [41:33]
David Heath
You've got to find the thing that's memorable and easy, right? And like Randy said, if you showed up to a dinner party and we're like, hey, I bought these comfortable socks, you'd be like, cool. You're never invited to my house again. Why are you talking to me about comfortable socks? But if you, like, brought the mission into it, you'd be like, oh, right. And then, like, you see our commercial or you hear somebody else talk about it, you're like, oh, right, that sounds familiar, right? It's not. Oh, just that comfortable sock company, right? That could be a lot of sock companies, right? We just happen to be the most comfortable. But know our mission is the thing that really sticks with people because that's the thing that we uniquely own that nobody else in our. In our category can own.
- [42:14]
Nathan Chan
Awesome. Well, look, thank you so much for your time, guys. Help a lot of people. You've got incredible experiences. So thank you so much for your time. More of it.
- [42:24]
David Heath
Awesome.
- [42:24]
Nathan Chan
Hey, Founder fam, thank you so much for tuning in today, and if you enjoyed this episode, please, please take the time to leave us a review and let us know what you think. This podcast is 100% free. We work so hard to go out and find the most successful entrepreneurs and founders in the world. Your feedback helps us grow, improve, and even bring on more incredible guests. And insights. So if you have a second, please take a moment. Leave us a review. It really makes a difference. Thanks again for listening and I'll catch you on the next show.