#511 From Bugaboots to Bold Ideas: Tim Boyle on Innovation, Legacy, and Leadership

Well, thanks. It's great to be included with luminaries like yourselves and it's always fun to talk about our business and the shoe business.

Well, you know, it's an interesting story. As you know, Portland has a number of shoe companies.

Just a few.

And this back in the early 90s, it didn't have as many, but it had one really big one, which was obviously Nike. And so we had just really been quite successful for the prior six, seven years making ski apparel. And one of the products which was a home run for us was the Bugaboo jacket. Just, you know, really launched our company. And the Sorel Boot Company that was a famous Canadian company. We didn't own it at the time. We do now, but they were following our salespeople around selling Sorel boots that match the color of our Bugaboo jacket. Rob Strasser, who many in the shoe business know or know about, had just left Nike. So, you know, we had mutual friends and I said, 'Okay, could somebody get me an introduction to Rob because I'd like to find out if we should be thinking about doing some footwear.' So, got an introduction, met with Rob and Peter, and Jim Gorman, who were all striking out in the footwear business themselves. They had a little boutique company underneath one of the famous bridges in Portland in a ratty old, you know, small space. So I went in and explained to them about the Sorel Boot Company and what they were doing and I said should we be in the footwear business and they sort of scratched their head and Rob said, 'You know, I don't know, maybe let me think about it.' So about two weeks later, he called me and said, 'Well, we have this consulting deal with Adidas,' which ultimately ended up with Rob and Peter running the business. But anyway, at that time, they were running out of this little business part. And so they said, 'We have this deal with Adidas that really precludes us from doing anything in this area, but the hell with it. You're a Portland guy. We'll do it.'

So, Peter designed the shoe, which was basically a Sorel boot that spent the night with an athletic shoe in a shoe box. And that's what would end up happening, the Bugaboot. And so I mean it was a really sort of just lightning strike. We didn't have a name for the product because we were not in the footwear business prior. And there were a number of people who suggested, 'Hey, maybe Mother Ducker might be a good name.' But my mother said no. So we went with Bugaboot. So that's what happened. That launched us in the business.

Yeah. I mean, the footwear business is different from the apparel business without question, but we didn't know enough to know that it was different. So, we just went ahead and did it.

Well, you know, it's interesting. One of my avocations, which I'm not very good at. I'm not very good at a lot of things, but I'm certainly not very good at playing golf. But I know the Jacobson brothers well and Peter is the famous Portland professional golfer and he was telling me about a trip that he had taken. He lives in Florida most of the year and he had a visitor from Portland, a guy he'd gone to school with at Oregon, come for a visit and they rented a boat. Well, it was Tinker Hatfield. And so they went out for a boat ride and they came back to the dock and there was 50 people waiting at the dock. And Peter said, 'Oh, you know, these guys all want autographs from me.' And it turned out that they all wanted Tinker's autograph, not Peter. So, it's sort of a light bulb went off to say, you know, we've got a story with a famous footwear designer and, you know, maybe we should make some noise about it and tell people about it. So, that was really why we decided to go ahead and reissue the boot. And you know, Peter's family, he's got three boys, two of them are living in Portland and operating his old design business. So, we sat down with those guys and I mean, it was really fun getting to know them. I didn't know the boys very well. I knew Peter much better, but I didn't know the boys, but I got a chance to meet them and chat with them and we spent some time together and it's been a really fun reissuance of a product.

Well, it was a very narrow relaunch. I think we made 1,983 pairs and this was really a celebration of the boot and sold out quickly and it was really fun. But we didn't offer it to very many retailers. So we think there's an opportunity for us over time to have a more commercial launch.

Yeah. So, there's lots of people in the company that are wearing the boot. I see them, you know, especially at the office today where it's been raining like crazy in Portland. So, people are wearing them.

Yeah. Well, the original Bugaboot, we made it obviously over several years. The original one could have fit better because they were using a running shoe last. So, we did some slight modifications there. The outsole material was a little bit less grippy than it should have been. So, you know, we made the typical investments in modernizing it, but no one outside the business would really notice that. It's more the nuances of the particular product.

Well, as you said, the apparel business and the footwear business are different. And I've said for years that footwear should be the biggest product category of the company. It's today about 20% of the total between the two brands, Columbia and Sorel. So, we can be better. But you know, sometimes we approach the product offerings in too much of an apparel approach. So, we've been criticized for that and rightly so. And so, we're working on that and making sure that we've got the right people and products to really be a high quality big footwear business.

Well, you know that there are a number of but not a vast number of iconic shoes in the footwear business. You know, you think about the desert boot and the Sperry Top-Sider and you know there's a few of them. Nike has a number of them and the Sorel Caribou is one and that's where we hope that we can get some real traction making the aura of the Caribou much broader and give us some opportunity to be a year-round multi-gender product line. And so we were very successful making an expansion of the women's footwear product. And now we think there's just as big an opportunity in the men's side to expand more beyond winter.

Well, you know, it really starts off with the company's founding, if you will, after my dad died and my mom and I were here running the business. From the year my dad died, the company did a million dollars and the year after we did a half a million. And so we were thrust into the business without really any experience. But as we learned the business, we were struck how first of all how a woman running a business, because I was 21 years old when my dad died. So my mom ran the business and a woman running a business at that time in the early 70s was so unusual. And so we hired an agency to help us and they recognized how different that was. And so the initial ads that we did early on in the 80s and the 90s were all about my mom torturing me as a test dummy for the company's products. So, you know, over time we sort of lost the opportunity, the ability to poke fun at ourselves, but we really realized that the key for our business, and we talk about this all the time, nobody needs another brand of footwear or apparel. There are plenty and really good ones. So how are we different and it has to start with the character and the personality of the products and the brand and that's where we said, you know, let's go back to those early days where we could really be a different company. So the people we compete with, which are great companies but they're all incredibly serious about their product. They're made for, you know, walking on frozen glaciers and our products can do all that stuff as well. And they're extremely well-designed for that purpose. But when you start talking about being on a glacier, you're just talking the same way everybody talks about their products. So that's why we want to really focus on being different and how we test the products. I don't know if you've seen the, we have a number of products that we're testing on. We strapped a guy, which used to be me, and we strapped a guy to the front of a snow plow and drove him around the Alps and tested.

No way. Uh-uh. No. That's, you know, he signed up for it and that's what he gets.

We put up, you know, there's another ad that we've done which we talk about our products can keep you warm in a snowball fight, but what about inside a snowball? And then we put a girl in a snowball and ran her down the hill. And anyway, so we're trying to be different from the rest of our competitors and get noticed. And then the flat earth thing is really an opportunity for us to do what we call activations, which are unusual connections with the outdoors that we think most companies can't do. We can do it and others can't and that makes us different and that's how we're approaching what we do.

So, you know, believe me, we have gotten plenty of entries.

Oh, it sort of depended. I mean, we did a series of commercials which started with me coming out of a cement mixer to market a pair of pants. And then that was one whole day and then the next day we did a shoot in the morning and then we took a helicopter up to the top of a mountain. These were shot in Vancouver, BC and then so those things would take two, three days. We did a shoot on Slave Lake, Alberta, which is a cold place, and that was at least three days. And one of the commercials, which didn't get a lot of airtime correctly, was I had a Bugaboot on one foot and a flip-flop on the other, and it was to demonstrate how cold you could get, which was cold. So, but it took a long time. And this flat earth commercial just took a few hours.

Well, you know, it's interesting. So we have business all over the globe. About 40% of our business is outside the US and every country that we work in has its own nuances as it relates to preferential trading partners, protectionism, etc. So we've become very adept at sourcing in areas of the world where there was an advantage to the company from a price perspective or a construction perspective. But that stuff is really not applicable in today's environment in the US. So we're doing what we can to try and influence the legislation. But you know, we have somebody in the White House which is not a normal approach to global trade. So, we have to just focus on doing whatever we can to have our products be competitive elsewhere in the world and then we'll do what we can here but it's very impactful and difficult.

Well, you know, if there's one good thing that came from the tariffs, it's everybody understands about tariffs. Now, before, people, you know, they were baffled. So, but now they all know it's a tax and it's intended to be a tax and you're paying a tax.

Well, I certainly hope so. You know, our plan is for it to be so. Although the first part of the year, with these are the first time tariff prices will be visible to consumers, we expect that there'll be some reluctance to pay higher prices. So the promotional activity may be enhanced.

Well, you know, obviously the long-term future of the businesses has to be laid out in an organized manner, but that doesn't stop me from coming up with a stupid idea and ask them to make it. They're always thrilled when I show up at somebody's desk and say, 'Hey, what do you think about this thing?' You know, they're sort of obligated to listen to me anyway.

Now, would we put them on a brochure? Probably not.

Well, you know, I have a SAG card, but some of those guys don't, so we have to be real cautious.

Well, great. There'll be more good stuff coming and you'll also see more interesting stuff along the lines of the flat earth challenge.

Yeah, we actually have a series of judges, but I get entries, you know. So...

I got a marriage proposal, too, out of the deal. So...

My wife told me not to answer. So...

She's not a flat earther, so you're good. You're score. You're good.