YouSaid · the spoken record

Charlie Clifford

lines on the record: 77
first: 2022-07-25
most recent: 2022-07-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I'll present it to the marketing committee. If I present it, it would immediately get declined, but I'll present it as Guy's idea.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think we've had plenty of luck along the way, guy. I think that meeting the right people, marrying the right woman, hiring the right people, or being lucky enough to be exposed to talent, there is an art and a science to hiring people, I think would be the best way to express it. Part of that art involves, look, we were lucky to meet the Rice brothers in Savannah. Larry Lean was a stroke of luck. If I hadn't intended that industry event, I never would have met Larry. So I think that if an entrepreneur or a business person always wants to be the smartest person in the room, I think their opportunities are limited. I always took great pleasure in being able to find people who had different skill sets and were smarter in the areas that they were stronger than I was. I think that that's how you get one-on-one and come up with three.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When Tumi was established back in 1975 to think that it would become in my lifetime, I think our peak year was 140 plus million, now it's over 500 million, that would not have been part of my game plan. I would have dared to dream that we could create a brand that was that large and that important. So where can Rome go? Like a $50 million, $100 million brand? Absolutely. No question about it. I think I'll start to feel that we have created a sustainable brand when the buzz begins. People are coming to us saying that they discovered us not through the press, but a friend of theirs recommended Rome. Peer reviews and referrals by friends. I think that's the real mark of a brand coming of age. That's what's going to put the brand on the map.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While the confidence comes from the fact that you're right, I've been through at least four crises, four major crises, the confidence that the market will come back. And we also were confident that we would continue to fund the business and we would be standing when people began to travel again. So that enables you to look at the numbers which were depressing because while we continue to book product and make and ship product, the numbers were much lower than we expected during 2020 and 2021. The second part of 2021, the market has become healthier month by month, but we're still not where we would have been if the pandemic had not come along.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“seventy eighty ninety percent I think the month of April DTC brands publicly announced that their sales were down by 90% from one month to the next so you go into a survival mode again fortunately we did not have a lot of fixed expenses we were able to make adjustments in our variable span we curtailed our advertising big time as you would imagine we focused on the product we focused on making the product better and we made a number of improvements during the product during this period small things many of which the consumer wouldn't notice but essentially make the product increasingly better”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll talk about being blindsided. Certainly nobody saw that coming. The impact of the pandemic was more, and I don't say this lightly, it was more than the impact of 9-11 and the financial crisis of 2007 and 8 put together. More than that put together. The travel industry came to a screeching halt and sales dropped by”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But they brought in a lot of capital. They raised a couple million dollars and then they raised $10 million. Then they raised $50 million. Then they raised $100 million and they created tremendous valuation. And the early shareholders have done very well, I'm sure. Growing a company too fast is a very risky proposition from a number of standpoints. So we were not going down that route.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wish that we had tens of millions of dollars to put you know there's again I think too much money too fast isn't necessarily good for a business no we did not raise tens of million dollars we bootstrapped the business We made a decision early on that as much as we admired and appreciated what Away had done with their business is that we were going to grow at a reasonable pace We did not want to be rushing from one round of capital raise to the next with venture capitalists. Away had really grew like a comet.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, we've got an ideal situation where we've got the Rice brothers, who are Tumi's original manufacturing partners. So that's a terrific outcome from my point of view. And we're able to do it in a way that allows us to have a reasonable price for the product. We're reducing the carbon footprint because we're not shipping container loads of empty suitcases across the Pacific. Now, we do source some components in Asia that are not available in the U.S. But whatever component we can source in the U.S., we do, and the assembly takes place in Vidalia, Georgia.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It did not, not the way we're doing it, we allow our customers to personalize seven or eight elements and we don't charge them extra for it.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really was stepping back and looking at the marketplace during the 90s, to me black on black luggage, mostly ballistic nylon, had become really the travel uniform of professionals. Very broad market following, and it became very normal to see lots of toomey when you were traveling. I thought that there was room for a brand that essentially could produce a high-end premium product that would be quite different from what Toomey was doing rather than gearing our product for Road Warriors who wanted to have a status piece of luggage in this particular case their boss might be carrying, we were essentially hearkening back to the early days of Tumi. We were looking for early adapters who were not afraid to adapt new products and essentially try something new if it was good looking and well-made.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I began to notice them probably six months to a year after they had launched. They came out of nowhere. There were a couple of young women who did a terrific marketing job. As you said, they sold the lifestyle. They sold a travel adventure. They created an aspirational brand, and they were targeting initially young millennials. You're right.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, probably around two thousand fifteen or sixteen, we were approached by a couple of people, retailers that we knew, who essentially had turned to manufacturing, hard side luggage in America. And they approached me and they said, look, we think we've got a good product concept. It's high quality. We're making America, but we're having difficulty finding customers. And I understood completely what they were talking about. It was very difficult for a new brand to break in. Their product was high-priced. We thought the designs needed work. We thought it needed a new name. We basically told them that we thought that the traditional approach of selling through brick and mortar stores for a brand like theirs that wasn't already there was a very, very difficult road to follow. And we basically said if we're going to do this, we've got to focus on.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, Larry Lean, Larry was a came to me and said, look, I'm leaving to me. Perhaps we could do something together. And he worked with me for a number of years where we were consulting and distributing in the luggage and leather goods area.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Now the worm turns, no? So I wasn't shocked when Samson Knight bought it, but it's not where I expected it would end up. I thought it would probably end up as part of one of the luxury houses as opposed to with Samsung, which is basically a very broadly distributed brand.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, private equity people are smart business people, generally speaking, very smart business people. And I think they realize that Toomey's future was as a premium brand. The middle of the market's a tough playing field. There are a lot of people fighting for a share of the middle of the market. And we looked upon it as no man's land. There were some good brands there. There's some good companies there. But I think playing at the premium end of the market. And I think Tomey is not really luxury. It's still premium. It's a luxury perhaps for the luggage category, but as brands go, it's a high-end brand and well-made and so on and so forth. But beautiful stores, but they've maintained the integrity of the product for the most part. And I think the brand is still going very strong today.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was certainly well aware of it. I was still traveling to Europe. There was honestly a feeling of pride at seeing the stores. Yeah, I bet they were taking the brand and they were taking it to the next level and beyond.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You hit the nail on the head. There was more emotion involved with leaving in 2004 than there was bringing in Oak Tree in 2002. Because in 2004 it was essentially closing the door. So quite a difference. And there was stomach churning and some soul searching. I wasn't ready to stop working. I still feel very positive about the company today, but it was time to move on and do something else.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, essentially the team that was involved with marketing the company would really have to be united in feeling that this was the best thing to do. And they surmised correctly that I wasn't ready to do that.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When they approached me in two thousand four and said that they had people who were interested in the business, my first reaction was it's too early that we shouldn't be doing this. But they estimated that they would be able to get a large enough multiple that they were very comfortable turning the business over quickly, selling out their stake and moving on to something else. That's the way PE firms operate”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did. The brand was still very healthy. We did not succumb to the temptations of creating sales by any means. During periods like that, when companies are under duress, often they will broaden their distribution or they'll run constant price promotions to the point that consumers might lose faith in what's this product really worth? Consistent pricing is very important if you're developing a premium brand. So we hadn't done anything to damage the brand. We had held true to our values. And therefore, as travel began to recover, people began having more confidence that security was satisfactory. Sales certainly be covered and began recovering in 2002, recovered more strongly in 2003 and 2004.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, this is 20 years after the event, guys. I'm sure there were various emotions at the time. But the first motion, frankly, was appreciation of the fact that we were bringing some money and that the company would live to fight another day and jobs were going to survive and the brand would survive. And I was optimistic about the future. I thought that we would live and prosper and leave the agony of 9-11 behind us. And that's what in fact happened.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was certainly extremely difficult. David and Alan Rice had been terrific partners and become friends. And we had to move to Asia for a number of reasons, one of which we had to improve our margins to give the company sufficient cash flow. It was something we had to do for the sake of the business.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes Right, and they were good strategists. There are a couple of young guys who engineered the deal were very smart, very capable. The difference between financial investors and other types of”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, we had other PE companies that were interested, but most of them backed off because they were concerned about the potential for another terrorist attack. So oak tree essentially presented the best offer that we had at the time. And they took a very strategic view of the business. Their sole job was to create value for their shareholders, for their investment”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They look for companies where they felt that they felt had a sound concept, a business concept, but for one reason or another, we're going through tough times. And after 9-11, we certainly fit into that category.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They got a great deal. We needed the capital at the time. They did come in with taking a majority share of the company. The fact that I was the largest individual shareholder meant that I had a seat at the table with them. I was part of the board of directors, but I could no longer call the shots when it came to major decisions.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There were a number of closures, absolutely. The specialty stores segment of the market became challenged during the late 90s and when the dot-com bubble burst, they were challenged even more and 9-11 was kind of the hammer that caused a number of them to either go out of business or to close their poorer performing stores in order to focus on the better stores and survive. So yes, we went from probably having 600 or 700 viable points of sale to I would suspect we lost maybe a third of those after 9-11.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was definitely in that neighborhood. So for the survival of the business, we had no choice but to make those decisions. And yes, it was extremely difficult.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first thing we had to do was create a plan to survive. We were in a survival mode and we knew the first order of business would be to cut costs. And that meant letting some good people go, which was very, very difficult because you develop personal relationships with the people in a small business.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was close to 40% right after. There's a media halt in the travel industry here. Stores stopped buying. People weren't traveling. They weren't looking for luggage. It was a very, very grim period.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think consumers were aware of shifting wins the early months of 2001 were not good. The economy started to slip. Therefore, we started to miss our projections. And as we began missing our projections, the private equity firm, they came back once, they came back a second time, and finally they came back a third time in the summertime to renegotiate the deal because we weren't making projections. In August, I went back to H&Q, our investment banker, and said, look, this deal isn't going to happen. Let's go back to the marketplace and we'll have to end this. I should say end the MOU term and go back to the marketplace. And that was probably a month before 9 11, which turned the world upside down.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, it didn't come in for a couple of reasons, well, one major reason. We signed the MOU in December of 2000. Unfortunately, December of 2000 was not a good year for the retailers. Christmas did not meet expectations. The dot-com bubble was about to burst.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, certainly I could not have done what I was able to do if I didn't have, had made a great choice in terms of the woman I marry. Cricket held the home front together. She was working full-time herself. She was an adult educator, but she was able to keep the kids pointed in the right direction and essentially my children were very understanding and support them as well. But I was probably on the road depending on the time of the year, 30 to 40 percent of the time. During the 90s Certainly in the 30% plus range.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, he recognized the quality of the material that it was a performance material that could create superior performance for the product, and he liked the design of the pieces.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the good sign is he didn't ask me to leave. He was a gentleman and fortunately he did not order any leather during that trip, but he did like the ballistic to the point that he said, would you mind taking order? And I said, gee, I really came to see you to get some feedback on the marketplace. And we really haven't priced our products yet. And my day was made when he smiled at me. He said, well, why don't you take the order anyway? And you'll know what I want. And when you finalize your prices, you could just send me a coffee of the order with the prices. So at that point, I knew we had some possibilities.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, again, what you do in a situation like that is you go to people who know more than you do about potential solutions, in this case, I went to one of the top leather goods retailers in Germany set up an appointment with them and told them I wanted to come down and talk with him about a new brand that was entering the marketplace during the appointment. I pulled out a leather bag and he took one look at it, put his hand on it, and he said, is this leather or plastic? I knew we were in trouble because I had been in a rush and I didn't really didn't take enough time to pick out my samples carefully. And we were manufacturing our leather goods in Colombia at the time. And when the leather was good, it was quite good. Often it was mediocre. And in this case, it was one of the poorer quality. Pieces that had just slipped through”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most Europeans, even at that time, were getting five or six weeks of vacation a year. They also travel a lot on business. Germany is a tremendous export country. I think they've got the fifth highest export level in the world even today. So there's a traveling mentality in Germany both for leisure and for business. And secondly, there is a large network of specialty stores in Germany. They typically would sell fashion handbags in addition to luggage. So these were thriving family businesses like in America. Many of them were second and third generation. So it was a very challenging market. It was a little bit like if you could make it in New York, you could make it anywhere. Germany essentially was the motherload, if you will, of the leather goods industry in Italy and Europe, excuse me.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Several reasons first of all, Germany was the largest market in Europe. Even at that time, there was in East Germany and West Germany. Germans are inveterate travelers.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Only momentarily, only momentarily. Having somebody say no was not something that was new to me. You're used to it and you pick yourself up and you figure out a different approach and go off and knock on a different door.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're absolutely right. Best thing that ever happened to us was that they thought I got brushed off head off, cut off at the pass.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Successful in Europe, you better do it yourself. You're not going to find a distributor who's going to devote the time and the resources and will have the patience to do what it's going to take to be successful in Europe.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They were a dominant player in Europe, and they were considered to be a more upscale brand in Europe than in the US. Sam Snyd was really the luggage of choice for business travelers. So I was a bit naive and both naive and audacious. And I had really had no business approaching them, but I was able to get introduced to the vice president of marketing for Europe, who was an American. He politely told me that they wanted to focus on their own brand, that they really would not be an appropriate business partner for us. I think what he was really thinking is there's no way in hell that Toomey's going to be successful in Europe and why should we get involved? And I end up speaking with another Samsonite person, a highly regarded marketing guy who had left the company, and he basically took me aside and he said, look, you're going in the wrong direction if you want to have any chance of being secure.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the ads were strictly feature and benefit. We had a picture of the garment bag, the headline was $500,000 from now. This bag will look better than ever. We had bullet points and arrows going to the particular features, and we had enough people who were interested enough to perhaps take that ad and go into a luggage store and look at the brand that we ended up developing a bit of a cult following among the frequent travelers. And long about nineteen ninety we had become a market leader in the high-end luggage business in the US.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Guy, it was certainly niche. It had good traction within the trade, within luggage specialty stores and the department stores that we were beginning to partner with at the time. But we began doing some consumer advertising by putting black and white ads into airline magazines. And this was before everybody was traveling with their laptop. People would actually pull out the airline magazines from the seat jacket. We had a black and white ad, two-thirds of a page. And the only color in the ad was we had a red Tomey logo on it.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“that by the late 80s Hartman, though still very respected, was becoming a little bit like an Oldsmobile, high quality, good brand, but it did not represent contemporary design. And Toomey was able to fill that role due to the black on black look.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's correct. Actually, I think we hit 10 million, a little over 10 million in 1988. But we were selling them primarily through luggage specialty stores. They became our brand ambassadors because the store owners and their salespeople became convinced that Toomey was essentially the best upscale serious luggage for traveling professionals, for frequent travelers. In the 80s, as we began the 80s, there was a brand called Hartman Luggage, which was a hundred-year-old respected American brand that had done a terrific job with nylon luggage. They were using a lighter weight pack cloth nylon, khaki-colored. And Hartmann had become a market leader, but the ballistic nylon, I think people saw it as more contemporary. They responded to the black on black look. It was considered to be a more modern look. They liked the pocket.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was an evolution again, as with most things in business, probably by the late 80s we were moving into what I would call a serious premium brand mentality. By 1990, Nylon was dominating. Was dominating because it really is a more practical material for luggage. And we started making eyeline bags in the US from day one, and that was probably in, I would think, 1983. And we were lucky that we discovered an ad in the industry trade journal travelware, I think was called at the time. There was a company in Georgia run by a couple of brothers who basically had a very catchy ad that said they did great work for low prices, and that caught our attention. We contacted them, started talking with them, and ended up working with them for many, many years.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My first phone call after we consummated the sale was to Jeff who was living in Tucson, Arizona at the time. And I think he realized that by leaving Samson and coming to Tumi, instead of being in a designer, one of many designers for Samsonite, he would be the designer for Tumi. My second phone call was to Scott Harris, who was our New York salesperson who had become a manufacturer's rep. And fortunately, Scott also agreed to join the company and became an instrumental part of building our sales team.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had to come up with a cash for the down payment. That's correct. Their business did buy the rest of his shares over time in terms of the fixed payments and the percentage payments.”
2022-07-25 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Tumi & Roam Luggage: Charlie Clifford · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT