YouSaid · the spoken record

Paul Van Doren

lines on the record: 77
first: 2021-11-14
most recent: 2021-11-14
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Vans is a people company that makes shoes, not the other way around So let me leave you with this parting thought. When you have good people with you, the odds are with you too, and the longer I live, the more I see the truth of it.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So for the rest of his life, he's involved in Vance. He visits stores, travels all over the world, gives talks. This is just fantastic life advice from a 90-year-old. During my talk, I was asked if you could sum up your advice on how to find the right track and succeed in life, what would it be? My answer shit happens. Shit happens, it really does. Letting yourself get stuck in it doesn't do any good. Acknowledge it and then move on. Don't let it weigh you down. Just cope. Tackling things in a positive way will help you succeed more often than not. Shit happens. These two words fully acknowledge the difficulties in life, but you can put them firmly in the rearview mirror without letting them mess with your head or your path in life. Yes, shit happens, but we can all recognize that we need one another. I said it at the outset of this book, and I'll say it again. No one gets anywhere alone, and in the final analysis what you make will never be as important as how and with whom you make it.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or anybody else's, but your friends that you leave behind, the family that you leave behind, that is your legacy. We are all, whether it's written down in a book or not, we are all writing a narrative of our own life. And this is a 90-year-old man telling you that it is important. When you get to the stage, this is going to be important to you. I found myself clinging to the stories, the narrative of my life, the whole of it, the tidbits, the toil, the crazy exuberance, and this is the book that now we get to read. And in this change, you can see that he almost doesn't say the implications he's preparing himself for death. I felt a measure of relief or release or whatever it is that allows a man enough grace to accept that there are things we can't control and cannot change.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is something in human nature that compels us to pass on the information we learn to the next generation, and I think you see that in the stage of life when people decide to write an autobiography, whether it's Phil Knight, Sam Walton, whichever one you want to pick. They don't do it when they're 30 or when they're forty. They're inevitably whether they're 60s, 70s, 80s, maybe in the case they know they have a terminal illness. That's when it's like, okay, I'm compelled. Listen to what he just said here. He's more depressing he's ever been in his life. He's saying it's a crock of shit. I'll never get over this. I have, what do you call it? A huge unrelenting abyss. And he's like, I found myself clinging to the stories, the narrative of my life, the whole of it. That's crazy. The narrative, I wasn't expecting to say this, but let's pause there. We're all creating narratives of our life. Maybe the narratives of our life are not going to be as wide-read as Paul's or Sam's or Phil's or any of our Steve.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he starts leaning on his kids. He eventually is going to move back to Southern California so he's not by himself so he can be near vans, be near his kids. But he says, this is wild because if you think about what he's about to tell us, this is the book that we get to read. He is not here anymore. For months, I didn't care about anything because I felt nothing. And yet I found myself clinging to stories. The narrative of my life, the whole of it, the tidbits, the toil, the crazy exuberance.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I felt less cheated. Bearing my wife left me rutterless in a black hole of despair. Writing this now fails to convey that in her absence everything was wrong, nothing mattered, and my grief was filled with fear. The dread of it masked everything that had ever brought me joy. You hear people coach one another on how life goes on, that we are somehow duty bound to do so, and that everything had a purpose. That's a croc of shit. The whole Dreama's absence left in my life is just a big, gaping, hungry abyss, and I will miss her forever.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She's got some form of cancer and she had a bypass surgery, heart trouble too. Suddenly she couldn't move her arms or legs. In the emergency room, they told us that she had developed an infection. Antibiotics weren't working. Days later, when she asked to go home, her doctor advised against it. Then he acquiesced, saying it wouldn't make any difference. I stared at him until it hit me. She wasn't going to make it. Two days later she died, and our love story of thirty four years had an ending I had not anticipated. I was in shock, utterly devastated. Over the years I've known sadness. My father dying in nineteen fifty eight was especially tough, but then I had two sons and a daughter and dolly to lean on. If I'm being honest, the only thing that helped me navigate his death was my second daughter Janny's birth and then Cheryl's which followed not too long after. If the day of my father's funeral was one of the darkest of my life, at least I had another twenty years with mom”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so at this point he'd been married for 30 something years to a second wife. They had moved out of California. And it's just, he gets to a point in his life. And this is why he was giving us advice a few chapters earlier. It's like, there's going to be bad things that happen. And you got to keep moving forward. But there are going to be times where you just feel like giving up. She had lost 40 pounds. She may have been weak, but the treatments off as they were seemed to be working until the day they weren't.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is when he's brought back into the company. He travels with them. He meets, he starts going and meeting some of the professional skateboarders. They had signed 40 years earlier. Now they're more mellow and everybody's a lot more chill and not as crazy as they were when they were in their teens and 20s. And then he just goes through a personal tragedy. And this is... This is why I think reading biographies is just so fundamentally important. Business books don't hit this way because you feel like you know this person.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so there's going to be a change of ownership. So it says a North Carolina-based fashion conglomerate called VF bought vans for $400 million. So in 1988, it was sold for $75 million in 2004. I was wrong by the date, by the way. 2004 was sold for $400 million. And this is where they start changing. They get back to their roots. VF seemed keenly aware of what it takes for a brand to be successful, authenticity, hence the line, the name of the book, right? What I always saw as authenticity in the way I did business now anchors the brand. I can think of no better legacy.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As every other shoe brand was selling, you literally couldn't tell them apart. And so his son is working at this company when this is happening. And he's like, this is ridiculous. So he's trying to do a form of protest, even though his son doesn't have much power in the company. So before a staff meeting, Stevie bought a hundred different shoes from a variety of brands and lined them all up on the shelves at the conference room wall. This is really fascinating. I defy anyone here to stand up and point to me which of these are Vance. Nobody could. Think about the indictment of the leadership of the company at the time. Eventually, they bring different people back. But anyways, not one person could. The person, the people running the company could not even tell their own shoes from those of their competitors.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so there's a bunch of ups and downs in the van's history after he sells the company. And he goes through talking a lot about it. I want to get to one point because he was very sad. He was very, he thought it was a mistake to outsource, to offshore, rather. And they wind up having a boost in profit because I think he says they're starting to pay people like 16 cents an hour or something in Korea. And he says, one sad reason for the associated financial boost was Van Schiff from American Made to Overseas Manufacturing. The factory is in Asia were simply able to produce shoes and clothing much more cheaply and quickly than the United States. I was totally heartsick at this development. Memory's a factory guy's entire life. Helpless to do anything but watch and horror as they systematically undermine everything I had believed in and everything I felt Vance had stood for. Vance no longer made the best shoes possible, but the cheapest shoes possible because the company was buying all their shoes from overseas factories, some of the van styles were exactly the same”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he moves to Kentucky. He's obsessed with horse racing he does for a while. Eventually, vans management brings him back. They do something smart because he kind of loses. He's just watching from afar. And so they later on, I think he's in the 70s at the time. They come back and he becomes like a frontman for vans again. He's involved in it. And they just go back to celebrating their roots and the founder. Even while relegated to sidelines, I was an avid follower of everything vans and I never stopped considering vans part of myself part of the vans family.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so even though he sells the company, he's on the board, but there's a little bit of like, if he learned from the biography of Trader Joe's, there's a little bit of like a Trader Joe's vibe. He's kind of sad because they stopped listening to him and asking, like, he basically has no influence. He says the acquisition marked an end of my leadership of vans as chairman. I continue to preside overboard meetings, but found that more and more often, no matter the topic, the board rarely decided to go my way. Was it tough for me to walk away from a leadership position at the company I founded? There is no denying it.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm fast forwarding a couple years later. He turns everything around, as you could probably guess by this point in the story. He's just really good at turning things around or making things solve. So then he's just like, man, I'm burnt out. I want to go back to my horses and everything else. They're like, hey, they're trying to figure out now that they have a large sales growth. So the partners are meeting with an acquisition. They call them an acquisition expert. So I guess somebody that sells businesses. And he says, if we're going to sell, we want three duffel bags with $25 million in cash in each bag. Would your people do that? So $75 million. Remember, this is $75 million and $75 million in the 80s money And so there's a, I think it's a venture capital firm. What is it called?”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so his response to this is, I just wrote more advice from a 90 year old that he repeats over and over again. It's like, you've got to learn how to get stronger because the idea that you're going to live a long time and bad things aren't going to happen to you, it's not true. It's not impossible. He says, trust me. The only thing I will ever say with any certainty is that at some point for all of us, shit happens.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love what his son does here because his son's been working in the company for a long time. This reminds me of what Warren Buffett does. Because if you go to Warren Buffett's office, he has on the wall newspaper clippings from the Depression as a reminder to how bad things can get. So when it looked like they were going to liquidate, they go in and they put stickers on everything because they have to sell it off. It says they even went as far as to send people into our offices and factories and put stickers with an inventory number on every single piece of furniture and equipment and preparation for the liquidation sale. To this day, in his office at headquarters, Stevie, that's the son, has stubbornly kept the same old wooden desk with that white sail tag still on it to remind him of what can so easily happen and stand guard against ever landing in a similar situation.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He follows that up with, but what could I do? Vans was my baby. And so this caused a huge rift because Jimmy wasn't taking responsibility, as you can imagine. When Jimmy left Vans, he made it known loudly and clearly that without him we didn't stand a chance. And then we see a little bit of Paul's self-belief and ego here. Was he kidding? I've been outperforming expectations at every stage of my career. I shook my head and thought, just you watch. You know what? Go ahead and take notes. So he goes on in detail about what he thinks Jimmy made a mistake as the note after myself here is perfect. Jimmy ignored what Michael Jordan was obsessed with. The second mistake Jimmy made was one he was destined to make more than once. He ignored the fundamentals. Vance had no business making wrestling shoes or running shoes. What the hell was he thinking? We had Rebach for that he talked about wrestling shoes. We had Rebach for that, and we had a whole slew of shoe dogs designing track shoes.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so it says our chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization called for the removal of Jimmy from the company leadership. The judge then ordered me back to lead vans out of bankruptcy. I returned with reluctance. This was surprising. I really like living out on the farm. I had officially been country.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My initial meeting was with the lead attorney. He asked Paul, who's your competition? In my entire 25 years, I ran vans, I never made a list of competitors. Not once did I consider which share of the market we might corner. This sounds a lot like Herb Keller. Not once, not ever No, what I thought about was vocanized rubber and how to do what I enjoyed doing to perfection for my family's business in Southern California. And so his response here is really surprising. He says, sir, it is my opinion that we don't have any. The attorney nodded. Yeah, he said, I was kind of thinking the same thing.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The smock, the schmuck, Paul says, who fails to consider what things cost never stands a chance. And so they're pushing to bankruptcy. The court is about to, it's on the, they're deciding whether to liquidate the company or not, since Paul is one of the largest shareholders in the former CEO. He's asked to go meet with the bankruptcy attorneys. This is very interesting. I like what he says here because his whole thing is like stop being focused on competitors. Focus on your customers. Your competitors do not give you any money”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Southwest Airlines is the only airlines to be profitable for 47 straight years. And part of that is he tells you over and over again, don't be tempted to stray from your niche. Focus on your niche. Stay in your niche. Don't chase everything else that other companies are doing. You already have your goal, your focus, just keep going down that path. So as Jimmy's expanding, Jimmy doesn't really know what he's doing. Paul did not like to have a lot of debt. He had one loan that he would take out every year because in the shoe industry there's a huge sales spike for back to school. And so he'd have a credit line, but he'd pay it off every October. Jimmy does the opposite. In two years between 1982 and 1984, right before they go bankrupt, he lost more than 3.5 million dollars in operating expenses. And then that's in addition to racking up another $12 million in debt. So this is what's going to cause them to go into bankruptcy.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Frankly, he talks about the comparison between the idea of this is what they know this for horses. Like he's in a horse racing, you have to put blinders on so they don't get distracted by everything that's going on the track. They don't get distracted by looking at their competition. They just look straightforward. And his takeaway from that is, frankly, we could all use blinders to help us focus. And so his brother does the opposite. He says everything Jimmy did he did over the top. Van started offering, or excuse me, Jimmy was trying to make vans into something was not. We were a company devoted to indie sports, skating and surfing, sports such as wrestling, skydiving, team sports like football and baseball were very far afield from our core market and mission, the key factor focus was being lost. Not only that, he starts trying to compete directly head on with Adidas and Nike, and their focus is running and basketball. So what are you doing? It doesn't make any sense. Main message if you study the life of Herb Keller, found of Southwest Airlines.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So he's going to get involved in the horse industry, buys a farm, raises horses, runs horses, gets remarried. He wants to divorcing his wife and then a few years later, gets remarried. So he's married 25 years to one wife, and I think 30 something, 36 to his last wife. But he has an entire chapter called shit happens. And so that's really his parting life advice to us, by the way. But he's talking about something, the idea that what's going to befall. He was focused when he started his company. His brother loses focus. So he says, if you ask me one of the biggest problems with many businesses, lack of focus kills. Lack of focus kills. It's usually a matter of focus. For me, whenever a situation went sideways and things look dire, I always called up my one superpower. Focus. When I focus, I tend to forget about anything else, or everything else, excuse me. I'm driven to get the job done and just keep doing what I'm doing until it's finished. It stands to reason when someone focuses all their attention on one thing, they do a better job.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was fifty one, I had been working my tail off for more than three decades, working more than full time since he was sixteen, from sixteen to fifty one in the same business. It's shoe business, that is. I decided it might be the right time for someone else to take over the reins of the Van's Doran rubber company and usher vans into the future. And this was really surprising because then he gets to his real life dream. He's going to let his brother run the company. His brother's going to run into the ground. And I think it destroys the relationship. He mentions that he never heard from him again, which is crazy. For my whole life, I'd really just one dream. Right behind the Let Me Craft the world's best sneaker dream and let my kids be healthy dream, right behind what I call those two essential dreams was one in which eventually I'd be able to do whatever I wanted financially. For me this meant being able to go to the races, the horse races he's obsessed with, which is really surprising to me to the horse races anytime I felt like it. As a kid, I never wanted to be a fireman or a doctor or even a businessman. I just wanted to go to the races.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Looks forward and asks, What can I accomplish now? The way we deal, this is one of the most popular highlights in the book, the way we deal with hardship is our legacy. You can accept defeat or you can overcome it. And so now we get to the point we're fast forwarding. He's been running vans for 15 years. And this is where he quits. He's burned out. By 1981, after 15 years in business, Daz went around and round. I could have gone on giving 100%, but this is hard to admit. I'd become burned out.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About how much knowledge you build up in that many decades. And so some of this is just life advice. He talks about. And so he says another lesson my father taught me. And without question, this is one to commit to memory. Life is only partly about how you hold and handle your cards. Don't ever be so goddamn sure of anything because nothing in life is given. No matter how good the odds, no matter who's the favorite, no one but no one wins every race. Even when we pay attention, when we hope and pray and prepare and double and triple check, things will go sideways. People lose their health and hard earned businesses and the loves of their lives, and no one sees it coming. That's the hard scrabble of life. Sometimes you have to know when to fold your cards and call it a draw. And so he's going to finish this advice. It reminds me of something I learned from Charlie Munger, that self pity has yet no utility. Sometimes opportunity just means that when faced with defeat or loss, a person refuses to say woe is me.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He talks about one of the first fans athletes, this guy named Stacey Perala. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. I don't know how to pronounce anything. You already know that by now, but really, this is another example. I gotta, this is so important. Don't copy the what, copy the how. In retrospect, one could argue that Stacey Peralta did for vans and skateboarding what Michael Jordan did for basketball and Nike. Stacy became a role model for other kids to emulate and vans were a signature part of his look. So I'm fast forwarding in the book. Really, one of the most valuable things is, I mean, the note of myself here is this is advice from a 90-year-old.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So now he's giving them shoes. Then he's communicating with them and they start to do custom, just like Jordan advised what he needed from Nike. Like the skateboarders start telling him that he does shoes specific for their sports, so he's able to improve even better because he's the only one in that niche. He's going to dominate that niche. And really, you think about this, he's using the Adidas, the Nike playbook, Puma also uses this playbook. Van soon became an important partner and sponsor of the sport. In the end, the consistency and longevity of Van's commitment to these signature sports really paid off. They did things differently, and we met them where they were.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What eventually would become professional skateboarders? So taking that idea that he first saw us at Didas and Nike, presented with the opportunity to make one shoe, and it's like, okay, well, you know what? I'm just going to give you pairs of shoes. And so they start signing up all of the skateboarders that are going to be extremely famous in their niche. So think about that. He builds his entire business off that's the beginning of their business. Would he have built his business off of that if he didn't first observe what Adidas and Nike was already doing? How important was him learning that idea? Like how important was it to the outcome of his business? Extremely important. If he could buy that idea in a store, how much would he even pay for it? Priceless”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Vans have or create an opportunity to support those. So the same idea that Adidas and Nike are using for track and Olympic athletes, he takes that ideas and he applies it to skateboarders and surfers. And what he combines this with another important point because since he was vertically integrated, people would come in and be like, hey, can I buy one shoe? And they're like, why are you buying one shoe? And he says, they wanted to buy one shoe at a time because skateboarders regularly wore out the toe and the heel of the shoe that met the street. So the shoe that's on the board is fine. It gets very minimal wear, but they're destroying this other shoe. And so his flexibility, the fact that he was the only vertically integrated shoe company around, and he's doing this at the birth, he's also in Southern California, which is like the birthplace of these extreme sports. He combines that. He's like, okay, well, yeah, we'll make you one shoe. And it's like, okay, and then he gets to know all these soon-to-be, I guess, I don't even know if professional skateboarding was a thing. I'm pretty sure it wasn't.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it says during that week I took note of the connection between star athletes and the companies that made specialized shoes engineered for their sport at the time as often Adidas. They were also a fair number of athletes wearing a new brand of more casual running shoe when they weren't competing called Nike. It turns out earlier that year, Phil Knight had handed out the shoes to five runners at an Olympic trial event in Eugene, Oregon. I didn't know how many of Nike's 12 styles are being worn competitively, but the Nike Cortez had been released the year before and the distinctive look of these track shoes had already set them apart. I started thinking about what I'd seen at the games. I started to wonder should we expand our ways of thinking? And so now he gets really specific about copying do not copy the what copy the how. Now I started to rethink my approach. I had seen firsthand how fiercely Adidas and Nike competed for sponsorships among big name athletes. Skateboarders may not have been an Olympic sport yet, but what about the skateboarding championship?”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Term off the wall, which also becomes a tagline for vans, and how it's the perfect metaphor for how he approaches company building. As an American idiom off the wall had been around for decades, but when it was picked up by other skaters, the phrase caught on as slang, evolving to mean something new and maybe strange or even a little nuts. Paul is definitely nuts. Say what you will, to me it screamed opportunity, a chance to push things to make the most of every moment. It captured Van's spirit and became Van's anthem, mantra, and rallying cry. Looking back I can see that part of my company's success was that willingness to go off the wall from day one. We were always speeding forward into the unknown, trusting that skill and agility would bring us safely back to Earth. This is what I meant about it.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so we're deep into the book now, and we still haven't even talked about skateboarding, which I was really surprised. I was like, so I get to this part. It's like, I was wondering when he's going to get to skateboarders. So his niche, the tiny niche that they're going to dominate that eventually leads to more massive people later on is with skateboarders and surfers. And what's interesting is they didn't target them. The skateboarders came to them. So usually you've identified the identification of your product niche or the market niche rather usually comes internally, right, which I found surprising reading this book. It was an external thing. In the early days, skateboarders were the renegades. The badasses of the sporting world and with their in, and I think Bob thinks of himself as that too. I mean, he is. He's definitely a renegade, a misfit, a rebel for sure. In the early days, skateboarders were the renegades. The badasses of the sporting world, with their innovative moves, creative vernacular, and their unusual practice spots. And so he's going to explain the skateboarding.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We never wanted or expected them to fail. I'd work for Randy's for twenty good years, and I'd poured a lot of my own blood, sweat, and tears into that company. That Bob and I became enemies when I quit Randy's and started my own venture was a shame. Later on, to our surprise, we managed to become friends again. Before he passed away at the age sixty two, Bob said to me, The biggest mistake I ever made was letting you go. Hearing him say those words was bittersweet. For me, quitting Randy's had probably been the biggest stroke of luck in my life. Opportunity is a strange beast.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I thought this next part was pretty funny. Neither of us pointed out the obvious. There was no guarantee that the next 10 stores would even do as well as our first 10. Better to ignore that little dark cloud in the sky. It was a risk I was willing to take. So Vans is gone it slowly but surely get into the black The growth is obviously a lot slower at the beginning of a company than it will be when it matures, but he's got a great story here that towards the end because as he's doing well his old company collapses and I love his tagline here the punchline is I guess a better way to put it and it's like opportunity is a strange beast So let me read this section to you. I thought it was really good Not only that, but Randy said also gone out of business though I'd been mightily upset with Bob in those early days when he tried to short circuit my operation I was still unhappy to hear this news Bob and I may have not parted on the best of terms but I had never wished Bob or his company ill. Certainly”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's what he does. And then he's like, who else would want this? Really smart. Just ask who else would want this? How can we sell a lot more at one time? Well, let me go and talk to sports teams. So he says, drill teams, cheerleading, sports teams, private schools and choirs would all jump on the idea of being able to have shoes that perfectly match their uniforms or outfits. So it's like, all right, well, then he's like, who else can I contact? I printed up some postcards and I sent them around to all the local high school and college physical ed departments, letting them know we now offer custom-made shoes for teams. And a lot of this is getting customers, which is really funny because people, sometimes you could dismiss a simple technique, even though it's effective. It doesn't matter, it's simple, it's effective. And he got a bunch of his business just doing direct mail postcards, handing out flyers, having somebody in front of his store dancing or like trying to draw attention to the fact that there's a shoes store. I mean, what's really crazy is like people think, oh, you know, that doesn't work today.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I forgot what it was. Some kind of pink fabric, they were making pink shoes, but it was like a different color. And so the customer had their own fabric, and he asked her, it's like, well, do you want me to just make you a custom pair of shoes real quick? The factory's right next door. If you come back in a few hours, it'll be done. And so after successfully making the two custom pairs for that first customer, I called a meeting and discussed the idea with my partners. They agreed that offering custom shoes as a service was a terrific idea. Essentially, the point of the story is that he found ways to get more customers. We immediately saw a huge potential market. Not only would women who sewed their own clothes be delighted to get a pair of exactly matching shoes, but drill teams, and this is the day he talks about, this is well before the days of like fast fashion. And fabric was really inexpensive. So you had a huge market of people actually making their own clothes, which I didn't even know. And so he's like, all right, let me just piggyback onto this already existing market. They don't know how to make shoot, custom shoes, but they're making their own clothes, bring me some fabric, I'll make shoes to match it.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the factory's up, they start producing, and he says something that's really interesting. I was like, well, I figure I can learn how to sell, right? In the beginning, as a numbers in production man, I had plenty to learn about dealing directly with the buying public. In the end, my best teachers in the art of retail were the customers themselves. And so that's another main lesson that he would tell you. Never give up the direct connection to your customer. He hated middleman. Most other shoe companies were sold. They didn't have their own stores. They were sold through retailers or in some cases wholesalers, whatever the case was. He's like, if I didn't have a direct connection with my customer, I would have never learned how to sell my shoe because I learned as I talked to them, I learned exactly what to do and what not to do. It opened up potential huge markets. So at the very beginning of vans, one thing they were very well known for. And the company got away from it later on. And then they go back to it, I think, a couple decades later. This idea of customization. And so they're struggling. They don't have a lot of business at times. Somebody comes in. They're trying to match.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Extremely important to Paul, but not only to be able to make your own product, to sell your own product, the less you have to rely on other companies and other people, the better. And he continues, controlling my supply chain. He eventually figures this out. Controlling my supply chain made all the difference in both quality and service.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he says, he asked, Why don't you just rent a paint sprayer? I said, What? What is that? This windfall of information was just an epiphany. My brother had taught me one of the most important business lessons. You don't know what you don't know. And if you don't know, ask. I had no idea such a thing as a paint sprayer existed, but you can believe that first thing the next morning.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From pulse perspective, he's like, there's very few people in the world that know more about shoe manufacturing than me. I'm sure I can learn how to sell what I make. So there's a lot of, I mean, it takes them over a year to set up and to get started. They're doing almost all the work themselves. I think him and his son, his son's probably like 11 at the time. They spend like 15 hours a day painting the factory. And then really, I just want to tell you a short story because... Paul's entire career is like asking if there's a better way to do something, and sometimes we have to be reminded to use our own ideas. And so says they're talking about this painting is taking us forever. Luckily, it happened to mention our whole exhausting painting ordeal to my brother.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so Serge or Sergei, whatever his name is, he gets 40% of the business for $250,000. Paul's going to get 40% of the business to run it, and then he's going to bring in two partners at 10% each. And then they're going to be off and running. So it says, we settled on making whole shoes and whole shoes and making them right. In the beginning, our manufacturing and fulfillment process was simple. Our employees would make the shoes in the factory and we would sell them straight out of the attached factory store. So this is what he means, what he mentioned earlier about we created the very first vertically integrated tennis shoe company. This is what they're going to, how vans is going to be for the first probably like decade of their life. Eventually the new owners come in. You know what's going to happen. They actually unfortunately Paul's really distraught at the time. They wind up firing and moving the factory, I think, to career or something like that.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That had been around forever. I never had that kind of lofty ambition. So that's what I mean about he was kind of a reluctant entrepreneur. He was kind of forced into this. If Bob didn't mess it up, there's no reason to think that Paul wouldn't have just stayed at Randy's forever.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and goes to Serge's house in Japan and Kobe. So it says, for five days we tossed around ideas, the most obvious being sneakers. Making canvas shoes was what I knew best. Hell, making canvas shoes was the only thing I knew. After 20 years, I learned every aspect of the sneaker business. I told I could make them in my sleep and suggested starting a small sneaker factory in southern California. And he says, he trusted my abilities, most important, he believed in me. I was somewhat astounded by all that was happening and flattered, not to mention a little bit more, mentioned more than a little terrified at the thought of starting my own business, but I knew I would be completely insane not to seize the opportunity with both hands and run before he changed his mind. He agreed to invest two hundred fifty thousand dollars I needed to start up the business, we shook on it, and the Van Doran Rubber Company was born. I had to admit that I never dreamed of opening my own shoe business and competing with Randy's, not to mention Keds and Adidas.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Change his mind or somehow talk me out of leaving as he'd always done before, I was destined to be sorely disappointed. He didn't say a word other than, okay, Paul, if that's what you have to do. That was the end of my career at Randy's and the start of the biggest adventure of my life. So then he has to go home and tell his family I'm unemployed now. Don't like, we're going to tighten our belts. They had a little bit of savings, but it's like, don't ask for things. We can't have new, we're not going to buy new things. And he says, I knew with certainty I had done the right thing by quitting, but I won't lie. I was more than a little scared. The future was one immense black hole of the unknown. So one of the suppliers”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is where Bob's calling him saying, Hey, I'm going to prote these guys. And Paul's like, no, don't do this. He says, after I got over the shock, I said, Bob, you can't do that. You have loyal employees who have worked at Randy's for a dozen years or more. How can you promote the two guys we had to show how to do everything right and who were never successful at their previous jobs? They lost millions of dollars. Bob, at this point, Bob had taken over the company from his father. Bob replied simply, it's my company, my decision. God knows why he made that stupid decision. Go back to that pigeon story, right? He's like, he's asking me to chase pigeons. I'm not going to do that. The reason didn't matter. Bob was making a giant mistake on many levels, a mistake I couldn't live with. I told Bob, this is wrong. I will not let you do it. His response was, I'm sorry you feel that way, Paul, but it's my company. I'm going to do it. And I'm going to do it. And then Paul's taking a shot at him right here. This coming from a guy who went to work in the morning was home before noon. All right, Bob, I said. In that case, I quit. If I had expected Bob”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When they were given the opportunity to vote on whether or not to be controlled by the Union, the result was unanimous. They voted the Union out. And we see more of Paul's personality here. Pretty soon, Randy's West, the factory he's running now, was killing it. In eight short months, we had turned the place around completely in our fledgling factory. He was now doing better than the East Coast factory. When Bob told me that bit of news, you can bet I was proud as hell. Take that, you pompous management assholes. And this is where we see Bob was not the right person for the job. He just said you're killing it. You just turned this around. A few months later, Paul's no longer working at the company.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we're seeing, I think, a lot of modern companies are experimenting with this as well. We eventually reach the point where we agreed that if the workers accumulate enough hours, we'd allow them to take Friday off. The goal was to make in four days what used to take five days. This meant they worked a four-day week, but were paid for five days. I put the same plan in motion in California. Again, it didn't take very long for the workers to realize I would deliver what I promised. They embraced the new system, and when they were given the... Oh, and so this is really interesting. The people that were in charge of the factory before he showed up were they focus again on production quality and Paul focuses on people. And so there was a threat to unionize. And so Paul comes in and he tells them, first he explains why he's doing what he is. So it's constant communication. They see he's busting his ass on the floors with them. He's not in the office. And then he keeps doing things like this. Like, let's work together. And so this change winds up when they have the chance to vote on unions. They're like, no, no, no. We're going to go with this guy. They embrace a new system.”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so he says, I decided to create an incentive plan for the benefit of the workers. Essentially, if they could complete eight hours of work in six hours, they could be free to go home. This was a system I had used several years earlier on the East Coast. The reason I had developed this idea of incentives in the first place was because I had a problem with production quotas versus quality. When I focused on production numbers, quality goes down. When I worked on quality, production went down. It was frustrating. Finally, I convinced the workers that if they produced the quota of eight hours of work and made whatever parts they were assigned to produce at top quality, but they did it in fewer hours, they were free to go home early that day. And so it works so well, they wind up saying, hey, do you want?”
2021-11-14 · Founders · #216 Paul Van Doren (Founder of Vans) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source