Behind the Brand of Tommy Bahama with CEO Doug Wood

Thank you for inviting me.

You know, actually I came in 2001 as a COO, and it was a much different company back then, Zev. It was a founder-led company that was a wholesale men's wholesale company first. About 90% of our business was selling men's sportswear to Nordstrom and specialty stores around the country. We've transformed a lot since then. Founders sold the company in 2003 to Oxford Industries, became a public company, which is a whole other story in itself. Then in 2008 I was made president, and that was also at the time when the big recession happened. We did a giant pivot as an organization and really started to focus on the direct-to-guest business: stores, our e-commerce business, our restaurants. That changed us dramatically from where we were before, and it's kind of the same path we've been on. I took over in 2015 as CEO from Terry Pillow. So I'm in my 24th year. With regards to pressure, I think the pressure really comes from just meeting the expectation of our guest. Our guest has a very high bar for what they expect from Tommy Bahama. I love the challenge of that, trying to figure out what to deliver: classic, great guest service with great quality and well-designed product with a happy smile. That's the story of Tommy Bahama right there.

You know, we launched in October of 2007, and it's funny to think back to those days because in a lot of ways we were all kind of learning what this new digital space was all about. I held firm to this idea that I know at that point I was being told a lot of things that candidly are wrong now, and I was resistant to follow any model. I looked at it as, hey, let e-commerce become whatever it's going to be. It doesn't have to be the biggest store, it doesn't have to be a marketing tool. I purposely kept it away from our other business units who were telling me, no, this is something that should just be an extension of us. I think that really led us to some really great learnings, because the truth of the matter is it is by far the most powerful channel we have today for reaching people. Even if they're not making their final shopping decision there, they're researching you there. I think it also led me to, whether I'm right or not, this is how I look at the world: I don't believe I have a store guest or an e-commerce guest, I just have a guest. Our challenge is to, wherever or however that guest wants to interact with us, I need to make that as seamless as possible. Whether they shop online or in stores or even with a wholesaler, I just have to figure out how to make that feel and always be something that they say, yeah, that's why I come to Tommy Bahama, they do it right.

Wow. Well, I think the first thing is that it takes time. It takes a very clear vision of what do you stand for and how are you going to do business. With us, I have a very clear mission and vision of how we manage and run the company. We have a very set group of values. First thing in the values is make big ideas happen. These values are like guardrails to every decision that we make, because we had opportunities to go a lot of different directions as a company. Like a lot of people, especially when you start having some success, doors start opening and you have to come up with decisions of okay, why am I going to walk through that door and not this other door over here? Because you're always limited on resources, you're always worried about where this is going to take us. Having very clear vision and mission, like we wanted to be an island-inspired lifestyle brand that took people someplace great and allowed them to relax, when you start running all these ideas and opportunities through that lens, you start to really weed out some things. There's some things you just don't want to do because that doesn't feel like us, that isn't what we're about. We're in our 31st year, our guests have come to trust us, and that trust is something I hold really sacred. When it comes to any one of our products, and products aren't just clothes, it's what's going on the menu in the restaurant, how we just opened up a resort, is that level of customer service meeting up to our expectations? Even if it isn't today, how do I get to where it needs to be? Those are all the things we think about and talk about internally. Then it's about execution. I can't stress this enough: words are only words, it's really actions and planning. I'm an operations guy at heart, knowing that I have a repeatable action in the field that I can rely upon so I can deliver something over and over again so that the guests, when they come in, they know what it's going to be like because this is Tommy Bahama, they do it the right way. Those are all the things that have led us to being around for now in our 31st year.

Yeah, it really started out right when I took over as CEO. I did these focus groups around the country, and they were fantastic. We brought in guests in 14 different markets, and then we brought in people that we thought should be our guest but we didn't see them shopping with us, so we talked to them. At the end of each one of the meetings, I would always ask the same question: so what would you like to see us do next? And every 14 different markets they said, well why don't you guys open a resort? We've been at your restaurant, we know what you can do from a guest service standpoint, what could you do in a resort and what would that look like? That really started us on this journey of learning about what it means to run a resort. Restaurants are hard enough, restaurants are so hard, resorts are harder. I always describe the experience of Tommy Bahama as when someone comes into a retail store, I might get like 15 minutes of their time. A restaurant, I get like an hour and a half. But if you screw up, if a button falls off your shirt, you might come back okay. But if you give them a bad meal, they're not probably coming back. Now if I wreck your vacation, you're not only not coming back, you're telling everybody what a terrible thing you did. So getting this right was our first challenge, and then just finding the right spot in the country. That's hard because first of all, I know what are like, hey, Florida, California, Arizona, Hawaii, these are big pockets of our business. But then finding the right resort, oh my God, so hard. Either you're too big, too small, not in the right spot, no that's not going to be nice enough that we can't execute that. This took years to find all the right things coming together. We found this resort that needed a refresh. I had actually stayed there like 20 years ago, I knew it. It's on 11 acres, it has 2 rooms, has a spa, has a beautiful pool, has a restaurant. Once we started really looking at it and then we found that the owner, he got it, they understood what we were trying to execute. Once you found the right group to work with, that kind of led us down this path. We opened up at the end of October of 2023. It's come out really strong, and I couldn't be prouder of all the work and effort that people have put into it. But we're still learning. Every day we look at this and say, you know what, we should be doing this or this could be better. I believe wholeheartedly that I would love to have five or ten Tommy Bahama Resorts, but if the first one isn't great, you only get one, you don't get to have a second one. So we are going to make sure that the Tommy Bahama Miramonte is great, and that way when our guest shows up, they're not disappointed, they have a great experience, they'll tell people, and they'll want us to have another one. So that's kind of the whole story of how it got there.

You know, they do. But what we try to do is, look, nothing's worse in my mind than I'm going to a nice restaurant and you're trying to sell me a shirt, or if I'm in my hotel room I feel like I'm getting advertisements thrown in my face. This is going to be a relaxing, casual experience that is upscale. Those three things don't usually go together well, but that's what this is. Our guest, I always describe, what should this be like? It's like, look, when I stay at a Ritz-Carlton, I'm uncomfortable to walk across the lobby in a T-shirt and a pair of swim trunks and flip-flops. I just am, I'm not going to feel comfortable doing that. You should feel comfortable walking around Tommy Bahama wherever, dressed casually. If you're going to the pool, if you're going to the bar to grab a drink, but at the same time, just because I'm dressed casually doesn't mean I don't want great service. It doesn't mean I don't want to be taken care of and met with that same hospitality you'd see in one of our restaurants or one of our retail stores. That's what the whole execution is about. Like I said, if you come into a Tommy Bahama Resort, you're already in our house. I don't really need to sell you. You can assume I probably could sell you the furniture if you wanted, you can assume that swimsuit is definitely ours, I can take care of you there. But I'm not going to try to sell you until, hey, you can come look for it and it won't be hard to find, but I'm not marketing to you as you're staying.

You know, Zev, I can promise you that we're going to keep expanding our food and beverage. I think there's more opportunities with our restaurants to really think about where we can take this. I can also tell you that the idea of what is casual and relaxed, we see the brand can go so many more places. We've got coming in later this year a large denim launch for both men's and women's that is really aimed at the fall holiday time frame but is year-round. Denim is worn year-round. I think that as I've seen in fashion for the last 24 years, there's a pendulum of fashion that moves around. For the last gosh, Lululemon brought in leisure, and the amount of tech clothing in the marketplace is amazing. But if you really stand back from it, what's happening is they've kind of taken away premium denim because now I'm wearing my sweats or my yoga pants. We think that pendulum is coming back and denim is going to be bigger than ever, so we're bringing that in a big way later this year. It's things like that that make it really exciting. The brand never sits still, we're always evolving. We do all of our prints and artwork in-house. Why do we do that? Because we're Tommy Bahama. I'm not following anybody, we're trying to deliver something authentic and fresh and new. That way our guests, when they come here, they say, yeah, that's why we always love Tommy Bahama, we know that they're trying to deliver something that's authentic to them. That's going to help us keep on growing and thriving for the next five to ten years.

Thank you, Zev. Talk to you later.