YouSaid · the spoken record

Joan Barnes

lines on the record: 155
first: 2026-01-19
most recent: 2026-01-19
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

“They were on fire. People were lined up. We did the highest dollars per square foot in both malls of any other store. During that holiday season”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got in telling them that we have 10 franchise locations in the area. These people know the brand. I implored them with all the statistics that I was aware of and that those people, you know, and they're going to bring other business to the mall. They come anyway to walk their kid, you know, just something to do. They'll come to the classes. They'll come to the store. And then those will spend money at the rest of the places. They'll go to lunch. And they bought it. And it turned out to be true.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This was the top of the line. And also the fact that everybody's tried to get in, and we don't have any history of any retail stores.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Wow, okay, so you get the clothes are being made, you get the leases in shopping malls, which Is a little scary because a 10 year lease, man, that's you are locked in and shopping malls, of course this is the eighties. I mean, today shopping malls are in crisis, but this is like boom times.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tenure leases, and they were at that time with only a thousand square feet. They were small stores. And we were ready to roll in the holiday season of 86 going into 87. All this had happened within a few months.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, they did it. And he said, I double it. You'll open two stores. So I did. I doubled the order. I come home. I get rolling. I look around. I find a location in San Jose and one in San Mateo.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Got me and the woman who was being my designer in the back of the bus of the airplane, one of us sitting line on the floor, the other on the two seats, you know. And we go and then they say they can't make that few quantity because what we need for one store. So I call Stuart and I say, Stuart, they won't make this few of quantity.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're going to laugh. Stuart Moldau, my leader. And he said, It's a great idea, Joan, but you need to know we're opening Gap Kids in six months. And I'm thinking, great, even if we ever get this started, we're going to go up against the most formidable retailer in the world. This is great news.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, all of that. Anyway, so they said they would think about it and let me know. And the next day, the lead investor called me, the guy that put in the first $300,000. And he said, Joan, I always believed in you. We'll give you a bridge loan, get over to Hong Kong, produce the line. And when you get back, you'll find a location. We'll open up a test store.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that question came up, but that one I had an answer for, that in our own environment, housed in our own world that we created, you know, and also the products that we were going to create, we're going to be really kid-friendly. These were three-inch cuffs and unisex and unisex was kind of a thing then.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Anyway, so I went to the board that Phil Schlein, who had been the head of Macy's, had just joined U.S. venture partners, my venture capital firm. And he asked the board if he could sit in on the meeting, because he was like the retail guy and he wanted to hear what the deal was. And so I made the presentation. I could tell that it was going over well. And then he asked if he could speak. And he looks at the board. He says, you'd be crazy to invest in this business. First of all, they don't know how to run the business they have. They don't know the first thing about retail. And he just gave all the reasons why they should not invest.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I said we really have come up with a winner to take the best of our reputation, the press, and all of that, and come up with something that is super sustainable. And it will need an investment. And I'm going to tell you how it works. So I just, I was all in sales mode. You know, we'd had a beautiful mock-up of the store, which is pretty much how it ended up looking like a gym and then some clothing. The woman who had done our clothing, her husband was the GM of the gap. So he knew all these people in China that could manufacture for us, you know, and she did a great job designing our first line. We couldn't design a boys and a girls because we couldn't make enough product. So we did a unisex line.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Okay, the board previously, like less than a year earlier, had said, go figure this out. And no money. Now you're going back and say, okay, we figured something out. I'm going to present this to you, and I need money. Is that what you did?”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. I thought it was, yeah. But I realized it was going to be, we'd have to really come up with the whole plan. We'd have to do a model of what the store looked like, some prototypes of the clothing. You know, we'd have to do a whole thing and then sell it to the board. But again, I'm young and dumb and, you know, just the business was not dying under my watch. That's what I can say, guy. It just was not going down.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the idea would be hey, they're coming in for the classes anyway, but let's make them walk through the gift shop first, right? Yeah, exactly. You are through the gift shop, then you go to the class, and you got to walk back out the gift shop.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the back of the walk through the store, but the store would be a new creation. We would design and manufacture our own apparel, and we'd also put some play equipment in. We'd have some, it would pretty much be all branded maybe in the beginning, we'd have to bring in some other people's toys and things like that. But it would be a thing”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a sketch. Somebody had some, this is what they'd come up with. Play centers instead of being in church halls, we'd rent a space, we'd open a retail store, jimbury branded stuff. And then in the back of the retail store would be the play program. So we'd rent one space and then all together. And I thought, wow. Retail stores. Wow, that's a big deal. You know what we'd have to manufacture our own clothes and, you know, sell them in our own blah, blah, blah. I thought, okay, let's put this together.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We did not have a money making business. And, you know, I always just say to my franchisees, the price of admission into the play yard of building a business is making money. You can do it for a little while. It's a social venture and it's fun. But if you can't make money, you can't stay there. So when I got back from my cabin, trying to figure out how long there were 50 or 25 grand was going to last and who was going to get laid off and who was going to take pay cuts and all that stuff. On my desk was a picture of a play center next to a retail store.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nobody knows nothing. Nobody knows anything except for me and my people that work for me. The board doesn't knows, but I said we're coming up with the final and winning solution, you guys. I just, I kept being putting on the happy face.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We laid people off, and those of us who remained in the, I called it the life raft. We all took 50% paycocks. I took a 75% pay cut. And everybody hung in there.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it was even less than that. My CFO came up to the cabin and we sat there at my little kitchen table figuring out how long we had to live”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I'm not done. I just can't have any, I would be a drag on a creative meeting for what's next because I was the one that come up with all of it. You know what I mean? I was the one, the big leader, and with the insult of Hasborough walking away from the deal. I just felt leveled. I had nothing left. I knew I would, but I needed some time to go be in nature and, you know, whatever.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a blur, and I remember finally flying home and going to the gymbrey office and telling everybody that this had happened. And I said, you guys, I know there's an answer, but I don't have it. And I'm completely spent. I'm going to go to my little cabin in the Sierra to restore. And I'd like it if you guys would take the weekend to get together without me so I won't inhibit you and come up with the winning strategy.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And she had been fantastic. She was with Montgomery Securities and she was a peer of my age. And so she came to the room and I just burst out crying. I said, I'm so embarrassed, Linda. I don't know what to do. All these hot shots are coming. Our lawyer, you know, another investor. And she said, we'll deal with it. We'll figure it out. And I don't even really remember. I just remember.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That was it. She was the kind. I said, should I call whatever the marketing guy's name, who I really originally connected with, I said, would I be able to speak? She said, nobody's going to speak to you. I am the ombudsman telling you the news. I'm sitting all by myself. These people are on the plane. I'm humiliated. I mean, I thought, okay, this is the end. I can't imagine what we can do from here. I mean, to me, this was the bailout. And the board was thrilled. They loved has, you know, Hasbro was a big deal in those years. Still a pretty big deal. Yeah. And so I left a message in the room for the woman investor who came from Montgomery Securities, who became kind of a friend. And I said, please come to my room. This is one of you.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what I thought. What? Said, I'm sorry. I said, we have our lawyer and our other investors coming. Everything was set. Your lawyers, I'm confused. She said, well, I'll straighten you out. She was really kind of not very lovely person. It's over. We're not coming.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Freaking out, and I'm trying to act like I have it together, and I don't want the franchisees to be panicking that we're going under because this is their business too now. You know what I mean? And so I get this offer. I'm so stoked. I get the lawyer. And they're lawyers. Going back and forth on these documents, and I go to New York to sign the deal. One of the investors is on the plane, the lawyer, you know, whatever. They're all coming for this big celebration for us to be partnering slash being bought by eventually with luck. Hasbro. I get a call that afternoon I'm sitting in the hotel room and she says hello my name is Carol Anderson I'm the senior vice president of something at Hasbro you don't know me and I said oh hi Carol I'll probably meet you tomorrow she says actually you won't the deal is off we're not coming”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Don't. I think they had an option. Maybe it was the first they put in an investment. And then if we hit certain benchmarks, they would buy it.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so this is 1986. You've got this major problem with the business, but then it suddenly looks like you might get a lifeline, right? I guess you get introduced to someone from Hasbro, which is one of the biggest toy companies in the world, right? And what? I guess they want to make an investment, maybe even a quarry. What's the story? What happened?”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because there's always a million more TV shows that are with a new. So we were dropped. And so now licensing doesn't work, the franchising, we're still operating. I'm not, you know, but. We're not making any money. We're doing fine. We're supporting our staff, but we're never going to pay them back. The same problem exists.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. Well, they obviously were buying some, but not enough because these licensing companies really want you to be the next gazillion-dollar baby.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. But probably a year later, maybe a year and a half later, we were dropped by all of them. Because we didn't have the sales. We weren't snoopy. We weren't Garfield. We weren't little princess or whoever the cool product was. We didn't have a TV show. We didn't have nothing. We just had this live living breathing program. And it wasn't big enough.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your own climbing equipment really colorful and nice looking and it was sold in Toys R Us. I mean, it was like, wow, we really struck gold. It appeared.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. And so we were able to secure some very, very prestigious licenses. We had Random House doing our books, health text, which was kind of a cool brand for clothing. They did a clothing line for us. We also had Connor Toys did some really like a big climbing gym that you'd put in”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first thing I thought about was what can we do that doesn't cost any money because they're not giving us any money. And I'm not going to be able to go out and raise money when our board is all invested in this thing and they're not putting up any more money. So I thought licensing. I was sophisticated enough to know licensing, you know, Jimbore had a really great name, as you said.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Say, go figure it out, just no more money. We're not giving you any money. Go figure out some other way. And that was like, okay, I'll figure out another way.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was, I mean, I'm usually pretty good at fighting it myself out of a paper bag, but this was the only thing I could do was just be honest with the board and say the way we're doing things is never going to have a return on investment for you guys. We could probably move along as a nice family business. I'd get paid. The employees would get paid. The franchise, but they would never see, they'd never see a return. And they didn't go into this to fund a little family business. I knew that.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would have been a race to the bottom Just undercut It's amazing because on the one hand, publicly you're getting national media attention, you're in baby boom, you're in People magazine. Everyone's talking about this thing. Every mom's going to it. Everyone loves it. It's so fun for the kids.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, by that time, we spawned competitors. And that's good news because if you don't have a real business, competitors validate the validity of the business. So they charged about the same thing. So it wasn't really sustainable for us to. Get to a fee where our 8% was really going to make a difference to us, you know.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Flawed I realized it was flawed, but I didn't know what to do about it because I couldn't figure it out because there was no way I could charge more or give less service. I mean, I thought of all the possibilities.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we already were doing it, so I'd seen we'd had several hundred of these things and, you know, each location would maybe pull in a good one, would maybe pull in a quarter of a million, maybe. Yeah, and we get 8% of that or whatever the percent was at the time. It was six. Who knows? Because it kept growing. And that just, and in order because of what I said earlier, guy, that the success of the growth of the business was how well we supported the franchisees. So, yeah, we could not support them, and then we wouldn't sell anymore. And so the cost of actually supporting them and sending out a team to be with them and run trainings for their teachers locally and all that stuff. It was all well thought out and really beautiful, except that it cost too much money”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How? Is that just because a franchisee might have three to three or open three or four days a week and only bring in a certain amount and you could see that there was just, you couldn't squeeze them for more.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I realized that the franchise model was flawed. That no matter how many franchises we had, it wasn't about scale. The revenues that the franchisees generated are therefore the percent that they would give us of their revenues was never going to be sustainable.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Alright, you get to 1986. This is now four years after you start the franchising. You've got franchisees operating all over the place. You've got 15 million coming in in revenue, which is from the outside sounds like you guys are doing great. But on the inside, you know that there's a problem that actually what seems to be a wildly out of control success had some serious underlying structural problems. What did you start to realize?”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were all over Mainly in cities, yes, or suburban markets. We were all over suburban Detroit, suburban Atlanta, Florida.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so this really was, and it sounds like you were targeting sort of affluent places initially New York and Los Angeles and San Francisco, but you were also in Kansas City. I mean, you were all in mainly in cities, right?”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was at that movie and I heard them say that. And people pay, as you know, millions of dollars to have their airline put in there. And I started screaming, oh my God, you know, because Diane Keaton's sitting there talking to a bunch of women in some upper west side park and they go, you don't even know what Jimboree is? I mean, come on”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Correct. Well, we had, in addition to the U.S. franchisees, we had sold Mexico, France, and we'd done those as master franchises. So they replicated who we were, and then they would sub-franchise to things.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right, so you get your really exploding. I think by 1986, I read you had twenty-five employees in your corporate office, you had about $15 million in revenue, and about 400 of these franchisees, these local play centers all across the U.S., even abroad in some countries. And I guess they were paying you like 20% or percentage of what they were bringing in.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. So we first of all had a week long training program and all the different people on my staff train different things. I trained them how to find a location. Somebody else would train about how to set up the equipment. And we also had quality assurance people that flew out to their locations and hung out with them and made sure they were doing everything well and whether or not we could be more helpful to them. All the marketing material, everything was, that's what they bought.”
2026-01-19 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Gymboree: Joan Barnes. How Building a Beloved Brand Nearly Destroyed Its Founder · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT