YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Pfotenhauer

lines on the record: 68
first: 2023-02-20
most recent: 2023-02-20
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

“Oh boy, that's a tough question. My feeling about luck is that luck happens when you're prepared to recognize it. You know, sometimes opportunities fly by you and if you aren't aware that they're present at that moment, you don't catch them. I certainly worked hard, but I've enjoyed it. So to me, it hasn't been work. It's been a life. It's been a wonderful life.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good question. I sort of am coming out of the woods here. I've done this for 50 years and I'm almost 70. And there are other things I want to do. I'm still in good health. My plan is to go back to art. I'm converting my backpack design studio over to art and printmaking. I do consider backpack design to be a form of art. And it's sort of coming full circle to me, starting with pure art and moving back into that. And I love to travel. One of the things I look forward to is being able to sit back and And see just how big we are and how successful we've been. I do get big hits of that when I go out traveling maybe to remote parts of Asia or anywhere and I see our packs out in the field and I see people enjoying the use of them and I Don't usually say anything to them, but it's a great kick to see that.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. There was nothing coming out of the factories. They were all closed down. So that certainly influenced some potential buyers. You know, they have had no idea what was going to go on with COVID. Neither did we. And I appreciated the ones that hung in there. It meant they were serious and they really wanted the company and they believed in what we were doing.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's true that my kids were not interested in taking over the company. My daughter was sometimes think that she could, but I would tell her you have no idea what you'd be getting into and you're not prepared. So unless you start going to business school or figuring out how you want to run this, forget it. But also, I wanted to find an owner that would have similar thinking to what I have, where I felt that people were the key of the business. And we talked, I think, maybe 35 different companies. It was a very difficult time because COVID was going on. In fact, at the most intense part of negotiation, our factories were shut down because of COVID.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. We didn't even, we really didn't even borrow money unless it was to, for example, do an addition on our factory down in Cortez.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think I relished the design work so much and really did not enjoy. Dealing with finance and marketing and money, and I never really had any desire to be the CEO of the company. In fact, when I look back on all the years that I've done this, I think the reason I maintain ownership of my company for so long was simply that no one else could tell me what to do. And I could focus on what I wanted to do. And I have a great time doing it.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“True, that would come up on occasion, and my answer to that was. You're competitive in that field. I always relished it when I saw my competitors pick up outlying products, tents, sleeping bags, etc., because to me it meant they were going to lose focus and expertise on what they already were doing and kind of water themselves down.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, one thing that comes to mind is if you look at a shoulder strap, normally you would sew a tube up and turn it inside out and insert foam inside of it. It's a fairly rigorous process to build a shoulder strap, and I came up with a way of laminating fabrics to foams. And punching them with a die-cut press and then binding the edges with tape. And once I showed that at a trade show, it caught on. There are a few cases like that where I probably could have made royalties or whatever on a patent, but I was too focused elsewhere to worry about that.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I never worried too much about it. From the beginning I had a negative attitude about intellectual property and patenting. I always felt like what really matters the most is making it better. And not being frozen and stuck with a patent. So for many, many years, I refused to patent anything. Sometimes I regret that. Because a lot of those ideas and concepts were quickly copied in the industry and became a standard. As the company grew, I certainly ran into interference within the company on that theory. And we have patented a few things that. We felt were important and necessary.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right in Mill Valley. I was able to focus on the design in California. It was easier for me to continue traveling back and forth to Vietnam based out of San Francisco.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, I think the strongest reason I came back was that, well, I had promised my wife that we would be there for two years and it had extended to four. Kind of just said it's time to head back. And I said, okay, you get to pick where we live now, and we move back to the Bay Area.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think for one thing, I didn't look at our competition much. If I did, it was simply to make sure I wasn't accidentally doing something that they were doing, that they had already done already. I had so many ideas on product and how to evolve it that I never was at a loss to move on to the next. Idea and concept. I didn't really borrow any concepts. I mean, occasionally you'd run into Some idea that somebody else had done that was undeniably the only way to do it properly, and everybody followed. But in general it was we were trying to do our own thing in our own little space.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the design happened still with myself and one or two people that we had back in Colorado. Thing that happened when production moved to offshore with a lot of companies is that they also forfeited their design to those companies, to those manufacturers. I called it the Vietnam melting pot of design. It's this forfeiture of brands, unique designs. Over to the factories. And consequently, I decided really early on to continue to do our own prototyping and design sample making within our own facility and not allow the factories to do that so that we could maintain our identity and our signature product.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was a miracle And it allowed me to go back to pure design work without all the trouble and headaches of running production. Dealing with HR issues and”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I loved it. I loved the culture shock, the complete change in not only the climate, but in the people, the language, the food was outstanding. And it freed me up to focus much more on design because so many headaches disappeared when I was able to move my production over there.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two kids, Rory and Amelia. So, yeah, we decided, I talked to my wife, and I said, well, you don't want me traveling there. Why don't we just move there? And I was shocked when she said, okay.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was traveling there probably four times a year. About Least a month each time So after doing that for a couple years and not having a very happy spouse because I was gone so much. And also realizing that my kids were growing up in a tiny town and they were Perhaps becoming susceptible to the dangers of drinking and other things that can happen when you're bored”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was doing design work in Colorado. We were keeping our sales and marketing, those people continue to work in Cortez. Once we started production in Asia, we were quickly able to grow. We were able to pick up REI. The order started pouring in and We were running out of places to store our product. We were filling up all the empty buildings in town. We even took over the old Walmart building and filled that to the brim. And we're paying a fortune to ship that out. At some point, we got wise and moved to all of our fulfillment to Utah, where there was a train service, which saved us a lot of money.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I took a trip down to You men really enjoyed being in Vietnam more than Korea. It just seemed like a warmer, friendlier place. And Vietnam prices, FOB prices were lower. And that once the US had normalized trade, which I believe they did in two thousand one. That's when we decided to move up production to Vietnam”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the right word. I felt guilty about doing that. It just was an inevitable economic move. We moved his production to three different Korean manufacturers. It was either that or shut down, I think.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you have to understand that the raw material supply chain was drying up in the US, it was moving offshore so that the raw materials that you needed to make this were becoming less and less available because all the other competitors had already moved offshore and were having everything made over there. And it was like so obvious that this was a wave of potential that we couldn't deny and that no one else was either.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After you do that, enough times you realize this can't go on. We've got to do what everyone else is doing and go offshore. And I took a trip to Korea, a friend of mine took me over there who knew the industry and introduced me to sewing factories over there. And they made counter samples and I was blown away by the quality of their workmanship. And the price was astounding. It was pretty much the equivalent of what we were paying for materials alone.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our workforce was growing old and maybe tired. And we would have to turn down some great partners because we couldn't meet demand. For example, REI was approaching us every year to pick up our product. And we always had to say no, we can't meet that demand. And they were baffled. They were almost angry about that because there was a demand growing for Osprey within their retail chain. I had go up and talk to him, but I just say, we cannot fulfill orders.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think most, if not all, of our competition had moved offshore. Our competition would get better and better at it. I mean, the fact that they could buy their product made at half the price. Not suffer any loss of quality, in fact, perhaps get a better product, made the decision not that difficult when you looked at straight in the face. And the ability to find more skilled workers was becoming more difficult. I think you could say that our Skilled sewing population was starting to age out. Young kids were not picking up that skill.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was pretty resistant to that idea. I wanted to keep all the people we had employed. We had about 100 people, I think, at that time working in Cortes. And I felt very responsible for them, of course. And it just, I could not fathom picking up and moving the whole operation.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really gain a lot of understanding the more time you spend with them and they add so much to how you see things. It's been a very key part of our company.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very powerful knight. They were trying to expel this force that had entered our factory and my sister and Eric, the guy that was with me, were having visions. And I was trying to maintain because I was kind of the face of the company and having a difficult time. Went on all night Funny thing is that in the morning when we got up to leave We were charged with the task of going to locate this Kachina doll, which we eventually did. I gave it to Otis, our medicine man, and he took it up into the mountains and did a ceremony and cleansed it and proclaimed that our factory was now back in running order. And we've had a number of experiences like that that I could go on and on. But one thing I've learned is working with other cultures.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we needed to do a ceremony to cleanse and to eliminate that risk. I thought, well, hard thing for me to grasp, but I can tell that these people totally believe this. My sister who had worked with me at that time and another guy we went down to the reservation and to disguise and we did a ceremony there with about maybe 20 Navajo. They had brought in a medicine man, a special medicine man who started bringing out all these relics and arrowheads and started grinding up something. It was dark in there I couldn't really exactly see what he was doing, but he Stood up and put a large mouthful of this paste in my mouth. And then proceeded for the whole night. We were under the influence of coyote. And the medicine man did chanting and...”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really? Okay, this happened here in Cortez during the period where we were working with the Navajo in production. And one day one of the guys, Otis Williams, who was Was sort of in charge of our quality control and our assembly and was also a Navajo medicine man came into my office and said, Mike, We need you to do a ceremony, and I kind of facetiously said to him, Well, I'll do it as long as I get some peyote. And I was really only joking. He had a serious look on his face and said, well, of course. Story unfolded that someone had put a curse on our factory. An ex employee had gone and worked with somebody in the black magic community of the Navajos and had A Kachin Which was, according to Otis and the people he was with, was active in our factory and was disrupting communication. Was an extreme danger”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Combination of all that. We would hire sales rep They would give you feedback on what worked and what didn't, what the retailers needed. We certainly paid attention to that. I also would go out backpacking and we would bring people in like all of our sales reps and do our sales meetings out in the canyons and test the backpacks. And then, of course, you look at the competition and see what they're doing. But there was never, I never was happy with what I was making. I knew I could do it better. And so it was just a... Actually, I got criticized often for changing designs. Retailers don't like that. I didn't really spend enough time understanding where they were coming from, and I would inflict them with new designs maybe every year, and that would obsolete their inventories.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was doing so many jobs that the design was just a small part of it, and that always frustrated me because that's what I love to do. I would find myself driving to a trade show and pretty much riding up the price sheet on the steering wheel of my car as I'm driving. Just to complete all the details that you have to have ready to present at a trade show. Of course, nowadays it's far more professional”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think initially I hired five. We just picked it up from day to day. We would hire more and more and they were primarily Navajo. And in the meantime, I was Covering all the other parts of the business, the designing, patterning, payroll HR. Purchasing quality control and overseeing the production.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We figured out how to turn that into a fanny pack. If you're at a base camp, you could take your top lid off and go on a day hike with a fanny pack. Features like that that made us unique.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I think I focused on anatomic design. Having been an artist, I understood a bit about how the body worked, and I certainly spent a lot of time drawing naked people. I learned that in college. Understood the shape and form of the body and I spent a lot of design time trying to focus on how to make these packs fit comfortably and how to transmit the load from the pack to your body comfortably For example, how you wear a hip belt and how that pack sits on your body without. Causing you a lot of discomfort. And also a lot on function. I think you were talking about the lid, the top pocket of a...”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I had Laurie and Gabriella had stayed in California, so I paid them off what I could. And it was Diane and I and my son Rory who moved to Colorado.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Small retailers that I would pick up at trade shows. And that we didn't advertise the word of mouth would go around that we had unique designs. Nevertheless, it was still difficult to meet demand. The demand was growing and we couldn't ramp up very quickly. So it was super challenging. And we didn't have a lot of money. I recall that when we moved from California, we had $5,000 in receivables.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I would have to say that's where the benefits of Naivi Day come in. I didn't really know what I was getting into. I knew that it was possible to ship out of Dolores using UPS or FedEx. But you have to remember that back in 1990 it was modern technology, data systems, et cetera, communication systems were still quite primitive. And in fact, we would go to the library to do our faxing. And the simple fact that there were so many skilled unemployed sowers was really what was the most important thing to us. And they were primarily Navajo. Many of them had been sewing for many years.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In addition to that, there were several hundred Navajoers down in Cortez 10 miles to the south that also were out of work. So we decided this is the place to move Osprey.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had always wanted to check out telluride, and I got a call from economic development in Cortez, Colorado, in the Four Corners area. And I liked the town of Dolores, which is 10 miles above Cortez. And there was an old building in town. Kind of was looking for a place that we could afford to rent that was large enough. This building was, I think, 7,500 square feet. The economic development guy had no idea what was going on in that building. We knocked on the door and lo and behold inside was a Contract group that was building for Gore-Tex, they were kind of doing top secret work on, I think, NASA's space suits. And they told us that that was their last day in operation. And that the building would be available and that there were thirty five skilled sewers that needed work.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, initially it was harder. We just simply could not deliver enough product on time. Simply because there were not enough skilled sewers. We've found it very difficult to find people to do that kind of work in Santa Cruz. It's pretty much a retirement or university town and you just never knew when your employees were going to show up. If the grateful dead came through town, they would be there, not at Osbre. Or if the surf was up or the wind for windsurfing or whatever, you just didn't know.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, I would say by that time 1986 of backpack was more like maybe 150, which meant we would sell it to them for roughly around seventy, seventy five dollars.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And this Yeah, with industrial machinery, and then to tap into the wholesale market, I hit the road with my wife. We would drive from One retail mountaineering shop to another and show our product line. And there were some shops that took a chance on us. I think our first order came in Santa Barbara. We thought it was a big order. It was only $800. And it took us like three or four. Night and days of sowing. Put that order together, but we delivered it on time.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the first thing that it entailed was getting a loan, I think, at the time. Borrowed $35,000 from a local community credit union. And then we had to find a location to start a larger scale production.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The four partners, yes We were not making enough money. I think at that time, 1986, we figured we were probably making about $3 an hour. And it was not enough to live on, and we realized that we needed to grow the company, we needed to move into the wholesale realm where we could pick up a book. Much greater customer base. And we were extremely naive about what we were doing, moving from retail to wholesale involves a pretty radical change in your ability to manufacture product. In a way that's profitable, but we didn't know we just decided to do it. We went to trade shows and we Learned also from repair what works and what doesn't work and what's going to last out in the field and what will fail. Put all those things together and start talking to, uh,”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, actually, around that time when we decided to expand, there was a fourth person, a woman named Gabriella Salinas, and the four of us. Decided to go into wholesaling.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I chose that name for one reason. A lot of backpack companies out there were named after the founder or the owner of the company. If you look at how my name's spelled, it's pretty much unpronounceable and no one could spell it. But on the other hand, I really didn't want to name a company after myself. I felt like it just didn't want that burden. Of seeing my name out there on product. I had seen Osprey in the wild backpacking with my father and my brothers. I believe it was in the little Grand Canyon of Wyoming, and it was during an electrical storm. Our hair was standing on end in these three or four osprey came zooming up over the edge of the canyon, and it was just such a memorable thing. And I just chose to use that name.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's true. I did that sort of work for Well over ten years, I'd say from 1974 to Got married in 1984 to Diane, my wife. She joined the business, she came over to work for with myself and my girlfriend at the time before. And we grew the business and at some point she said, I think we need to move to the next level. Involved borrowing money, which has always been a difficult thing for me to do. But I agreed. This was in around 1986.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was enough to survive on, I suppose that's all I really cared about at that time being twenty, twenty one years old. I didn't have any huge ambitions I was able to put enough gas into the car to go up to the Sierras. And it was, I could work at my own hours. I would get up just before ten o'clock when the shop would open. And I would work, do a lot of my work late in the evening. It was a great life. I feel bad for people now that want to do something like that. And I just think it's not quite possible anymore.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It would take a while. I could sew an internal frame pack in maybe five hours of work. That back in those days, that was a $75 product. Now it's about $300.”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was. I was pretty far from being a businessman. I never paid much attention to the sides of a business that you should finance and sales and marketing. I've never really been very much interested in that and I've surrounded myself with people that did that much better than I ever could”
2023-02-20 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Osprey Packs: Mike Pfotenhauer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT