YouSaid · the spoken record

David Heath

lines on the record: 77
first: 2025-01-13
most recent: 2025-01-13
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“It's a combination of course, right? That's kind of the only answer we time things well, which feels like luck, but everything that led us here personally, the two of us, to that moment, the four founders to this moment to start the company. And then the things that we committed to doing and that we stood by through the years, you know, things that we've put against tough decisions and core values Dave mentioned, understanding what we're great at and what we need help with, being humble leaders. Really committing to doing something that benefits our neighbors in need, all these ideas, that feels like the hard work It lets you. Be opportunistic around some of the lucky moments and capitalize on some of the lucky moments and things like that. So it's a wild combination and it's been a good ride because of that”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I practice Stoicism and one of the great Stoics is Seneca. And here's a quote that says, luck is when preparation meets opportunity. And so I think for me. We were very opportunistic and we were really prepared. We put ourselves in a lot of these positions, right? We saw this quote and decided to do something about it. We went out and researched product, which then led us to my godfather, which then, you know, so I think a lot of Certainly Locke that played in part to the moment in time in which we formed this company to All the fortuitous events that have led us here, right?”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Kind of make up our minds and decide that, like, we're just going to run a great business. And if someone comes and is interested in buying us, we'll talk to them. And if it's a good fit and we feel like they'll be good stewards for the product, the brand, and the mission going forward, then we'd entertain that. If not, when there's an opportunity in the public markets to kind of fortify what we've built and, you know, help us kind of build the dream that we're looking to build in the future, we'll go that route too.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the way we think about that is we're incredibly opportunistic Didn't design this business from day one to say, oh, it's got to be X billion dollar valuation, or we're going to sell it to this person, or I think, again, in hindsight, looking back by not having influence from large institutional partners early on, it allowed us to really”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How do we operate? Are people going to show up to work anymore? Are they just going to mail it in or turn their videos off or whatever Probably one of the proudest moments I've ever had as a leader was we shut the office down on that Friday and by Monday, everything was like up and running and like people were showing up to meetings and they were like, yeah, it was almost like it almost like rallied us. I think people were like, and this is a point actually where I think the mission comes back, right? Because. Became this moment where we're like, wow, this is actually a time where we can step up and use this other arm that was mostly used to just distribute socks. Now here we are as a, you know, as a platform that's helping a lot of our peer brands learn what it means to give in times of need.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100%. I mean, we watched our business go from like 50% year over year growth in that January to a negative 12% year over year growth in March of that year. And I'm grateful that within a matter of weeks it had rebounded and we were back at like 30% plus year over year and then 40%. And then we were like had comps that were insane. But yeah, I don't think anybody was prepared for that moment. I actually think the biggest fear for us is that we had built this amazing, incredible culture that we felt like fostered innovation and efficiency and was so collaborative. And we just built out a brand new 33,000 square foot office in Union Square millions of dollars of investment took over a year to build it. And then two months later, everyone's remote. And we're just like”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Did we were profitable in year one, in year two? We made a lot of capital investments in inventory mostly because we were growing so fast that we were just like. Gotta stay on top of inventory. And inventory kind of came the cash crunch for us always every single year heading into holiday where we do about 50% of our business that September PO order was always very expensive because we were front loading these costs and wouldn't really get those back until the books closed at the end of the year.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The recognition or validation from the venture community that this might be a little bit of a harder road for us to go down. And I think it was also the moment where we looked at the brands and companies that we admired most, right? The Nikes, the Lulus, the underarmors, the Patagonias of the world, right? Brands that had endured the test of time over decades and decades and decades of growth. And the one consistent thing that we found in those companies that was different than our peer set of the awaits and the warbies of the world is that they didn't grow by raising hundreds of millions of dollars of capital and trying to skyrocket the highest valuation possible in a short amount of time. They did it brick by brick, slowly over time, sustained growth year over year over year over year. And that was the playbook at that time that we kind of at that moment was a pretty pinnacle moment for us to say that, you know,”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My brother, and really. Instilled this moment of, you know, let's focus on continuing to build a good foundationally unit economic positive business that generates profitability. And we weren't going to sacrifice profitability at the expense of growth. So because we didn't feel like we were getting”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think this is an important moment to interject that. At a pretty high pinnacle moment. So, in the first 13 months before Shark Tank, we did about $900,000 in sales pretty organically. And then in the two months following Shark Tink, we did 1.2 million. It sold out of every single item of product that we had leading into holiday. And we felt like we were on top of the world. And we just closed this million dollar seed round. And I think you put three people like me, Aaron and Randy in a room, right? Or pretty optimistic, you know, growth focused. And we were like, oh, like, let's go for it. And Andrew really became like the voice of reason from a CFO perspective. Kind of”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We just always wanted to surround ourselves with people that were smarter than we were about the things that we didn't know a ton about. We had our skill sets, right? Dave was a great leader, a salesperson, right? Aaron and I could handle the creative and the design. Andrew was running the finance and operation side of things. And we just started to fill in the gaps around us. So eventually that was customer service, marketing, product design, right? These were, and then we had a sort of like GM and PR figure. It was our first employee, Emily. And this early team started to really galvanize around what we were doing and all with the same attitude of let's figure out the things that we need to do to keep building this, to keep pushing it, to keep growing it, and be really honest about what we don't know.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think in that moment, there was sort of a new floor for the business. It's kind of the way we thought of it. We had all these new customers and we had made a lot of promises through this business, right? We promised we'd be donating a pair of socks. And how do we show people the work that we're doing on the donation side? We promised a certain level of comfort and quality with our product. How do we ensure that people understand that and what we're communicating? And how do we back that up so customer service became super important? Dave mentioned he took every customer service call for the first year plus of the business. We would be out at a bar. He'd get a call and he'd go outside and disappear for now. We're talking to a customer. But in that shark tank moment, we brought in a team and, you know, that was the beginning of our customer service team and our happiness guarantee. And then we realized that we had brought somebody on to help fill that marketing gap, right?”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'd been up for the last 48 hours. We didn't sleep the night before because we were working on the website and we were trying to get the website ready for this massive event. We were like trying to scale up customer service people because that's the one thing we heard was like people were like, oh, hire a bunch of temporary people to answer the phones and answer emails because like you will not be able to do this on your own. And so we didn't sleep for almost two days. We're at this like viewing party that we had put on like zombies. And then we're getting phone calls that the website's crashing over and over and over and over again.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our website crashed guy, and it was terrible. I mean, that was, you know, it was like a super joyous moment and a huge moment and then a moment filled with dread and terror. I think we had a viewing party. I mean, do you remember this, Dave, like just looking at each other and thinking.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we just closed our million dollars of seed funding and basically said, look, we don't need any more cash. So, you know, can we renegotiate the deal to provide you with some upside with no kind of cash investment? And the two of us, Damon and Bombas, came to an agreement that both parties, I think, were pretty amicable with and set the foundation for a really, really amazing relationship that has only built over the years. And I think both people feel really happy with what they got out of it.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Big part was let's even see if the episode airs right because they they film something like 150 businesses and then they air like 100 right so it's a 33 chance that we weren't even going to get on air and so we told damon or damon told us like let's see if this thing comes on air and then we can talk about it because kind of no sense in doing anything if it gets cut We were out fundraising at the time, and so we were like, all right, we're going to run our business as if we were never on Shark Tank and we never got a deal and continued to fundraise over that summer. And beginning of September, we get a phone call that says your episode is going to air in three weeks on the season premiere. Get ready. So pick up the phone, call Damon. We said, all right, well, we've got to get a deal done.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Damon John did make an investment. I think the deal, the original deal was like 200 grand for like 17.5% equity. I guess what a lot of viewers don't realize is that you don't actually have to take the deal, even if you accept it on the show. And then sometimes you can renegotiate the terms, which from what I understand is what happened, right? You accepted that deal on the show, but then you renegotiated the terms?”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And Dave and I were sharing a hotel room that week, right? And so I was there with my friend and I was away from my family and it was really hard. But we were here to do this thing and it sort of galvanized us and at the same time took the pressure off. But yeah, to your point, you get to that moment. And it is a moment of nerves, you know. They open those doors and you walk down that hallway and you think to yourself, hey, that looks like Shark Tank, you know? And you're like, okay, I'm on Shark Tank. And you walk in that room. And then, you know, it's on.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very hard. And I got on a plane. Dave picked me up at the airport with Aaron and Andrew. And the four of us had a moment where we'd been preparing for this, so we felt prepared. In a weird way, this took a lot of the pressure off because it just, you know, it was an important moment, but it also, you know, it was just in a very different space.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'll tell you this the week that we were set to film Shark Tank, my father passed away. So he passed away on Father's Day in 2014, and we were supposed to fly that day to LA. So we almost didn't go. Dave and I had a conversation. We talked to the show. We decided we were keeping the date. I went down to Florida where my parents were living at the time. And my mom and I dealt with the arrangements. And we had like a really like. Interesting conversation, and I said, you know, I'm not going to go. Dave will go on by himself. We'll figure this out. And she said to me, you know, if your father knew that you were skipping this opportunity because of him, he'd be furious at you and you have to go. And we've done all the work and the funeral will be next week and, you know, go. Which”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it also allowed us to focus the business on sustained profitable growth versus go out, raise 50 million dollars, build up multi hundred million, billion dollar brand, but be losing hundreds of millions of dollars every year, which we're starting to see how that's playing out for those companies today.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think from a confidence level standpoint that made us requestion things a little bit too. And so I think as a result of that, we said, okay, maybe let's not push it as hard as we could. And let's just focus on building a great brand with great product and give back to the community and kind of see where it goes, right? Of tempered our expectations a little bit. And so, as a salesperson, that was pretty hard for me to take. But it ended up being good for us, guy, you know? Oh, amazing.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so after Indiegogo, we launched the website, shipped the orders, and we kind of wanted to see would people come back? Would they be rebuy? Would they tell their friends about it? Yeah. The following few months, we did another couple hundred thousand dollars of sales. In the beginning of 2014, we said, okay, feels like we have something here. As you mentioned, we ended up”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Listen, we had a product and now we had customers and we had orders to fulfill, but we didn't have a website and we didn't really know what to do next because we weren't sure how this was going to go, right? And we started to see it happening. We started to plan. Yeah. Okay, what do you do now? Okay, like we know how to build websites. We've done this for lots of other companies. But now you got to do it for yourself. And what are we saying and how are we putting it together? Shopify was not the Shopify it is now. So we had a lot of like technology decisions to make at the time and we needed to move quickly. This was like a little bit of the period where you say we've got something here. We've validated it in the marketplace. We've got these 2,500 customers. Let's build something and then just take one step at a time.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, like Dave was smart about this, right? Because he said about halfway through the campaign he hit go on the order. And that's a little risky because we don't know exactly how much it's going to be, but we were very, very adamant about trying to deliver our product within the window that we promised and then following up every person that ordered with a personalized email, thanking them. Listen, you launch on”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had calf and an ankle in a black and a gray base with four accent colors. You could like select what you wanted on when you like fulfill the order. And so about halfway through when we were at about 50,000 dollars of sales, that's when we actually hit the go button on the order because we're just like, well, we clearly surpassed, right? We've got plenty of time left. Like this is. Way more than we thought. We placed the production order so that we could at least beat the lead time that we would have on promising people when they would get delivered. And there was a thought, well, get them delivered before the holiday so that if we have more inventory, people could come back and rebuy for Christmas.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and it's a tension. A tension that we were after invalidation, right? You know, our friends and family said we loved it, but your mom loving your socks is not that hard, but a complete stranger putting their money in to say, I will buy this product before it's available to me and wait however many months to get it. That to us was enough validation to keep going.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We felt like this was really our one shot to get it. And so being relentless, I even think to a certain degree shameless. I found a way to download my entire Gmail contact database. And I don't mean like just the people that are like in my contacts. I mean, every single person that I'd ever emailed with ever in my Gmail, you can like find a way to do this in Gmail. And I remember downloading this like 12,000 person email file file. And sending it out, not knowing who was on it entirely. And I got response back from people who are like, this is awesome. I sold you a set of concert tickets on Craigslist four years ago. Like, I'm going to buy a pack of socks. And then I had people.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Things were coming to an end for me at the end of 2012 at Urban Daddy. Know It was time to move on. It wasn't a good situation at the end. There was conflict. It wasn't ideal, but we were also... Know things were moving pretty quickly compared to how they had started with Bombas. We started to get a little momentum. And Dave had left his job. And there's that moment where you have to say, like, okay, now's the time. Let's do this thing. And again, we had other things going on. So we had a little bit of safety. But, you know, after having a job for six years to be in a position where you're just. Building something, building multiple things, even it's a moment. And I think a lot of people face that moment when they're doing this. And you just have to give it a little bit of a leap and you have to put in the legwork, I think.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is where the opportunity comes in, right? Like, you're a thoughtful guy, but you haven't spent a lot of time thinking about, well, it's not something people think about. It just wasn't, right? Like we didn't, Dave and I didn't grow up dreaming of being in the sock business. I mean, nobody did, right? Like this is something that we stumbled upon, but it was an opportunity to. Test out an approach in a brand and do something great and it was all really motivated because we wanted to make a difference, right? The idea looming out there was how can we donate as many pairs of socks as possible? And that's a real motivating factor when you're building a product.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we just were, these are the types of details where once you're in it and you have the luxury of time, like this is the type of, this was the approach, right? And this is still sort of the way we approach product design today. But that is it, right? Like thinking about each little detail. And the idea that all these little things that nobody thought about or cared about could, when you put them together, just come up with some thing that's greater than the sum of the parts, right? You don't have to remember that the honeycomb arch support or a seamless toe or a y-stitched heel or that we used Pima cotton. But when you put it on, the feeling is this feels different and I like it more and I want to wear this every day. That's what we were going for.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Didn't think that ants were that marketable. Bees tended to be a little bit more playful and fun. And so kind of landed on bees. And I think it was mostly Aaron had kind of come up with this idea of naming it Bombus with the Latin word for bumblebee is bombus, but with an A, B-A-M-B-A-S. Kind of our thought was well, if you Google Bambus, you're going to get a bunch of like beekeeper information. And so we thought, all right, change the A to an O and make it a little bit more unique and ownable.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I think when we got to the point where we were ready to name it, Randy and Aaron said, give us the weekend. Right, let us kind of know what this company kind of feels like and stands for. Let's throw a bunch of things up on the wall and come back and present me and Andrew in the group with a broader set of ideas. The two that kind of they came back with that were the most at the top were something around bees or ants because these are two animals.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the work bombus comes from the Latin word for bumblebee. You know, obviously we're a company that's community-based. Bees live in a hive. They work together to make the world a better place. We love the inspiration and the idea of things coming together in a hive to work together to improve their world.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had the luxury of time, right? Because we took two years, there was no pressure from anyone but ourselves to build this at that time because it was bootstrapped. And it gave us time to develop the idea. Know, like Dave said, he leapt first, and then in early twenty thirteen, when I was no longer at Urban Daddy, we sat down to write the script for our indiegogo campaign, and And that was sort of a moment where we felt like we were writing the covenant of the business. It took three months for us to write that in something today that would take, you know, three hours for a copywriter to do. But it was putting all of our ideas down on paper in the right way and getting our storytelling around this product that we believed in at the time.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Andrew was working at Regales, so he had a paycheck coming in. So, the most likely person to kind of take the leap first, like I didn't really have anything else going on and I didn't really like the job I was working at. So I kind of took the leap first and kind of front-loaded a lot of this stuff. And I just think naturally, you know, while certainly difficult, it wasn't never like argumentative or contentious. And I think. Everybody kind of just agreed to let separate agreements and decided to divide the business up. The way we decided to divide it up.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, a lot of hard conversations early on That I think were determinant of, you know, I had kind of put most of the capital up front in terms of, you know, paying for. Legal incorporation and some of these other things. I think the rest of it was kind of determined by who could take the risk to jump first. Aaron had a family at that time, right? So he was like, he valued being able to keep his day job and keep a steady job.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Luckily, the sampling was like the inexpensive part. I think they were thinking longer term, like, oh, if this turns into something, we'll get the business. And again, by having my godfather tied to this, I think they were less concerned or they had a higher degree of faith that it would be successful. I had to incorporate the business, right? So I hired a lawyer and ultimately when we decided to launch on Indiegogo, we had to pay for the video and some of the creative assets. But our whole approach to launching this business was try to bootstrap as much as possible. I think by the time we launched on Indiegogo. I had about, I don't know, $12,000 to $18,000 of credit card debt.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I know this is really strange, but I'm developing a sock company. Would you be willing to try these socks for me? And, you know, if I see you next week, tell me what you think. And I get a lot of really weird looks. And inevitably, though, I'd show up the next week and those same people would come back and be like, where can I get those? Those are amazing. Like, what are they”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the sampling process for us was a pretty big eye opening experience, right? We didn't go into the product development process with margin or pricing targets. Or, you know, this speaks to Randy's comment around us not having any experience in the manufacturing or retail apparel world. So we kind of came at it from a pretty blank slate of just saying like, what's the best product that we can make? And then as part of the development process, We would give samples out to friends and family and they would come back and they'd say, wow, these are really great. And then we'd be like, yeah, but maybe they say that because they're our friends and family. And so I very distinctly remember bringing samples to the gym with me. And I'd walk up to complete strangers. And I'd say,”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was pretty clear pretty quickly. I mean, we didn't have the data, we weren't in the apparel business, you know, and I think this was a big advantage for us. Yeah. We just look, we took a look around and we just saw what was available. And what was available was always the same over and over and over again. And it just felt like an afterthought. I don't know, Dave. Maybe you have a different perspective on this, but I think we knew pretty quickly.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ended up introducing us to this factory partner in Asia. And because of his legacy and credibility in the SOC business, they were willing to work with us. I mean, this is a factory that produces for Nike and Sokony and Smartwool and some of the biggest sock brands in the world. And here they were talking to us, and we didn't even, we didn't have like two nickels to rub together, let alone like a full blown brand or concept. And their willingness to work with us for almost two years on product development where we would go back and forth and say, we like this, we don't like that. Send us some samples. We give them, we'd try them out, we'd give them to friends. And this development process that ultimately led us to a product that we thought was pretty great.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The fourth co founder, who I'd worked on Regales with from the branding perspective. So the four of us sit down with him and we say, here's our idea. And he said, tell me the product you want to make and I will introduce you to the best factories in the world. Wow. And so we start working together on figuring out what are the components from each individual sock that we like the most, you know, the toe from this one, the calf from this one, the fabric from this one, the arch support from this one. It kind of Frankenstein this sock together and we like cut up a bunch of socks, put them in a plastic bag and handed them to the godfather. And he said, let me come back to you in a few weeks and see what I come back with.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He lived in Westchester. I called him up and I said, Hey, Steve. Have this idea for a SOC company, and it turns out that Steve Lowenthal was the president and CEO of Goldtoe in the late 80s and 90s, which is like”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Remember sitting down for dinner with my dad one night, and I said, I'm thinking about starting the stock company. It's going to donate a pair for every pair of purchase, but I don't know the first thing about making a pair of socks. And he turned to me and he said, well, you know your godfather spent 40 years in the hushery business and did incredibly well. I don't know what I don't know what he did, but you should give him a call. And so I didn't talk to this guy in 15 years. So I give him a call.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was community first, I'd say. So first we asked why. Why are socks the most requested clothing item in homeless shelters? So we made a call. We called a shelter, and we said, is this true, first of all, and why? And they said, well, you know, if you're living on the street, you might not take off your shoes at night and a fresh pair of socks means a lot. You walk everywhere. You have hygiene issues around your feet, and then it can be a huge issue if it rains. This is a big issue. And because socks are aware through item, we don't allow people to donate them. So you cannot donate use socks to the majority of shelters and organizations that help in the homeless community. And they said, so we end up having to buy socks. So it's a big issue.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe there's an interesting idea around solving this problem in the homeless community by building a brand around a sock company that donates socks for every sock item that we sell. That was really kind of the initial spark”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just saw this thing that said socks are the most requested item at homeless shelter. It's like this was around the time that I think Tom's was in their fifth year of business and like growing like crazy, taking over the world was like one for one business model.”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it's like meeting your partner, right? These stories happen in kind of the most interesting and unexpected ways. It was February of 2011. I was still working at Urban Daddy and I was scrolling on Facebook and I came across a post from the Salvation Army that said socks are the number one most requested clothing item at homeless shelters. And I remember thinking to myself, That's both interesting. And yet, here's an item of clothing that I've never spent more than a few seconds a day thinking about. And this is the number one most requested item for someone who's experiencing homelessness. And I remember walking over to Randy's desk and I said,”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Called Regalis. Yeah, and I ended up getting another job at a private equity firm that paid really well. I was like, this is kind of interesting, but I don't have the time to run this. So my brother really stepped in to kind of run that business. My brother had just come out of MBA at Babson and was looking for a job. And I said, well, why don't you step in and run the operations and finance component of this business”
2025-01-13 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Bombas: David Heath and Randy Goldberg (2022) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT