Where
you been, Paul?
Uh, not here.
Not my favorite place in the world, which is, of course, on the Wassa Business Show.
In Wassa, Wisconsin.
USA.
I've been busy, man.
How about you?
Yeah, I mean, first things first, right?
Hello, WBSers.
We sure missed you all.
We're happy to be back.
Back with a big show today.
It's
been an agonizing couple of months, I'll tell you that.
Agonizing.
Yes, yes.
I've been longing for this microphone back in my face.
Okay, here we go.
Episode number 68.
Yeah!
And now, the Wausau Business Show returns with your Bob and Randy's B&R Lovin' tea shop shoppin' 19th hole swingin' hosts, Ryan and Paul!
The Wausau, Wausau
Business
Show!
Cause I'm right here, right here,
right here, right here at home.
Where's home, Paul?
Yeah,
Wausau!
I'm a winner, I'm a lover, and I'm a sinner.
That's
why it started.
That's exactly right.
Big runners.
Welcome to the Wausau Business Show, everybody.
I'm Ryan.
And I'm Paul.
And we are proud to be your hosts here.
I'm very back.
Very
proud.
Talking East Bay, speaking of runners.
Iconic East Bay, started in Washington, USA for those who don't know.
Art, Yiddish,
and Rick Gearing.
That's right.
I got it right.
Art and Rick.
The two that started it all.
And you always hear Art and Rick.
Art and Rick, it's never really, sometimes it's Rick and Art, I guess.
Sure.
But it's always Rick and Art, Art and Rick, Rick, Rick and Art, Art and Rick.
And I've heard that my whole life.
I've never really met them.
I'm looking forward to meeting them in person.
I heard they even signed their checks, Art and Rick.
Is that right?
That's what I heard.
They don't do the last name?
We'll have to ask them.
Okay.
No last names.
Just the first names.
But it's Art and Rick.
Rick and Art.
Art and Rick.
My whole life I've been hearing Art and Rick from East Bay.
These guys founded East Bay.
They took it public.
You know, they made it rich and big and famous.
They changed culture in the United States for sneakerheads everywhere.
Absolutely.
And I'm not afraid to admit that I don't know which one is Art and which one is Rick.
Well, we'll find out today.
Like if you had them in a lineup, I would have no idea which one was Art and which one is Rick.
And I'm worried that I'm going to mix it up.
when they get in here, like I gotta do a map or something.
That's Rick, that's Art.
Yeah, write their names down on a piece of paper with an
arrow.
Pointing, that's Art, that's Rick.
Got it, okay.
Okay, Art and Rick.
Yeah, just don't let them see it.
So this is an interview we've been waiting for, for well over a year, we've been talking to them while coming in.
Art and Rick.
25, I believe.
It's been a long time.
And they've been wanting to, but they wanted to time it right.
They waited for their book.
They said, wait for our marvelous book to come out first.
And then we want to come in and we'll talk about the book.
Well, that's a great idea.
But then I thought, well, is the book really going to happen?
And are you really going to come in?
And are we waiting around?
Is this really going to, you know, as a good salesperson, I like to follow up and follow through.
That's right.
And we followed up.
You have the books coming along, the books coming along, and sure as ****.
Can you say that?
I don't know if we can say that.
They launched this book.
Yeah.
And it's on Harvard Business Review.
Right.
Right.
You know, the publisher, it's Harvard Business Review, HBR Books, and that is one of the best business publishers of business books in the world.
I think it might be number one, to be honest with you.
Art and Rick are going to come in, and it's a very nerve-wracking interview for us, I would say.
Do
you think I'm wearing the right shoes for these guys?
Perfect.
Okay,
good.
Zabatos, they look great.
Thank you.
But, you know, you spend the time with the book, and you don't just want to regurgitate the book, you want to be like, well, if people want to know about the book, they can go and read it.
So let's
talk about stuff that isn't in the book.
So then what do we talk about?
Well, that's their kind of life story in the book.
So a lot of mounting pressure here to get this interview right.
I don't even know what questions I'm
going to ask.
It's nerve-wracking.
Where do you guys bank?
colonoscopy for example just out of the blue yeah I think
that's not
in the book I don't think they wrote that I I speed read it if you will last night because I wanted to be prepared for the interview always do go ahead and I couldn't put it down if I'm being honest
yeah it's a good one a lot of those stories I had heard fragments of over right years but this is the complete
profile.
And you know,
we had Harry Colecourt in and some of the book.
There's a whole chapter called Harry.
There's a whole chapter called Harry.
I think it's chapter 30 or something.
I'm meeting that up.
Just titled Harry,
right?
Yeah, titled Harry.
Chapter 13.
What's the title of the chapter, Paul?
Harry.
Okay.
That's
simple as that.
But we had Harry in it.
So when I was reading the book, a lot of what I was reading or some of what I was reading anyway,
Harry came into this very studio and told us about.
So this was a little bit of a different perspective on some of the stuff that all UWVSers heard from Harry Colecord when he came in the studio last year.
Yeah, you don't want to just ask him about that either, because you heard it from Harry.
So how do you make it a different, fresh interview?
So this will be great.
Yeah, I can't wait.
We'll be on our toes, Wassa.
You know, I say, I don't know what the first question I'm going to ask is, but I do in all seriousness have...
So many questions for these guys.
True Wausau icons.
Yeah, these guys are business icons in Wausau.
Talk to the company public.
And then sold to Monster Footlocker on top of that.
Cha-ching.
Okay, anything else we need to talk about before we get into the Art and Rick segment?
Which one's Art and which one's Rick?
I even get their last name sometimes confused and conflated.
Yeah, I think when we were talking
about
having
them on last week, you... Art Yiddish and Rick Gearing.
Gearing, you called him at one point.
It's Rick Gearing and Art Yiddish.
Correct.
You just always hear Art and Rick.
Art and Rick.
Right.
Rick and Art.
Right.
So we'll finally get to the bottom of... The Art and Rick saga.
But they're lovebirds.
Yeah.
These two have been stink on shit since they were kids.
Since one of them was two days old, if I heard that correctly in the book.
But these guys have been friends their whole lives.
Yeah, connected at the hip.
And then they got into business together.
So let's get into it.
You know, we've still got to give that $10,000 away, Paul.
That's just unfinished business.
It's burning the hole in my pocket.
Gaining interest is worth a little bit more than $10,000 now.
A little bit.
But what did we call that competition?
A friend of a friend competition.
It's been
so long.
We still got to do that.
We got to give the $10,000 away one of these weeks.
And we have a new segment that we're doing in season two of the Wausau Business
Show.
Here we are.
Season two, baby.
That segment is called Where Are They Now?
Oh, I love that.
That's a brilliant idea.
We did Wausau Business Rumors a lot in season one.
Yeah, season one, the inaugural season.
It's been so long.
We're just back.
And we figured we'd better call it season two.
It's season two.
Welcome to season two, everyone.
So where are they now?
I'll call you up.
And a little twist on that is where are they right now?
Oh, like currently at this hour?
This exact second, like we got to call Dave Craig coming up and see.
Like where are you at at 8.04?
Yeah, Saturday morning.
Right now, Dave Craig, friend of the show.
Yep.
Dave Craig.
Like to hear about
him.
We got to catch up on some of these people that we haven't talked to in a while, like Ross Jurgle.
He was in a Philadelphia cream cheese commercial.
Right.
During maybe the Super Bowl, were we on during the Super Bowl?
I don't think so.
I think he had like a Super Bowl commercial.
He did, yeah.
Yeah, we missed all these fun things, Paul.
I know.
So where are they right now is
coming up in the Wausau Business Show?
Can't wait.
So are we going to call them up and just say, where are you right now?
And Dave Craig is going to say, uh, Lakehouse in Arizona.
We're going to say, thanks.
Bye.
See you,
Dave.
I like it.
Well, we might as well just do it down quick.
Give Dave a call.
Yeah.
All right.
Okay.
He always takes our calls.
I wonder if he's going to be shot of a cannon like
normal.
The Warsaw business show wants to know.
Are they looking at their phone?
Are they completely alone?
Right now, this instant right now.
Let's see.
Dave.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
Oh, God.
Do you think he's going to pick up?
I hope.
I want to know where
he is.
Hey, Dave.
Dave.
How you doing?
It's Ryan Paul calling from the Wausau Business Show.
How you doing?
Good.
Good.
Good.
We just were curious what you're doing right now.
Right now, I'm getting a disc put on a trailer for my tractor.
All right.
He's
a real
man.
Well,
we just wanted to call him say hi, and we're not going to keep you.
We were just curious what you were doing right now.
You're funny.
Yeah.
Back here, I've been out to the land, and then fixing my dock.
He's the best.
Because the logs get underneath it.
So yeah, I'm working hard and out.
I did the last two, three
months.
All right, love you, buddy.
Good for you, Dave.
We'll talk to you soon.
Hope all is well.
OK.
Take care.
Take care, Dave.
Bye.
Bye.
Well, now we know what Dave Craig's doing.
I told you he'd pick up.
Wasn't sure how that would go.
Yeah.
Where are they?
Right now.
All right, Wausau.
We'll be right back.
Episode number 68.
It's the Wausau Business Show season two.
We'll be right back with Art and Rick.
Yeah.
Or is it Rick and Hart?
Let's go, Art and Rick, Rick and
Hart.
Remember the Reebok pumps, Paul?
Oh my god.
How can I forget?
Yeah.
I had a pair very proud of.
Oh, they were warm for years.
Let's go.
We'll be
right back.
All right.
Pump up the jam.
Pump it up.
Why your feet are stumping?
And the jam is pumping.
Look ahead, the crowd is jumping.
This is
the
true
story
of
two wassoneans picked to host a business show
and have their lives taped to find
out what happens when people stop living elsewhere and start getting to wassup the wassup business show wassup
the wassup
business show
with Ryan and Paul
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As the marijuana burn, we can take our turn Singing in dirty rap songs Stop and hit the ball like Cheech and Chung This hell takes from here to Hong Kong So roll, roll, roll my joint Pick out the seas and stems Feelin' high as hell, blind through palm hills Skatin' on takin' rims So roll, roll the 83 Cadillac dudes to feel If I take some of CDs, just
I bet my cabby wheels.
Hey, it's
the Walsall Business Show.
I'm Ryan.
I'm Paul.
Sorry, I was in the back office with the guys.
Just catching up on a few
things.
It's been a few months.
What were you doing?
Running payroll or something?
Good.
Catching up on a lot of things.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are honored to have Rick and Art, Art and Rick here.
Rick Gehring and Art Yiddish.
Yeah, welcome guys.
Welcome to the Walsall Business Show, gentlemen.
What an honor.
Jeez, a true, true honor.
Finally, after a year, it's been over a year.
Has it been over a year?
It's been over
a year, we told you.
you, we would come on when the book was done without being long time
ago.
It's finally done, so we're here.
Clearly, men of your words.
So it's a true honor.
And I think I speak for everybody that we can say it's an honor that you wrote the book.
And thank you on behalf of America,
I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And specifically, Wausau.
I think there's
a lot of shout outs to Wausau in there, which is really cool.
Well, wasa was extremely big in our lives.
Yeah.
So it is.
You're both Catholic school guys, right?
Great schools, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, Catholic great schools.
St.
Mike's, if I remember, yeah.
Who's Diet Mountain Dew is that over there?
That's right.
That's art?
Yeah.
Okay.
That that's that stands to reason because I have a special delivery here from a special person.
Yeah.
She went over to the Wonder Bar and she went to the Wonder Bar to get this for you guys.
She wanted me to get you these junior mints.
Some junior mints and a diamond dew.
She said it was a regular mountain dew, but I got you a diamond dew, too.
Yeah.
So it's funny that you're still doing the dew.
Oh, yeah.
Those those do or a stuff.
So you just never quit.
Yeah.
Just keep going.
I've been drinking that.
That's Wally's popcorn stand.
You should look out the window, Art, because it's hard even talking because we're sitting on top of where Wally's Wonder Bar was.
Yeah,
that's right.
There's a
tear in your eye.
I can see it.
Spent a lot of time
there.
I know
this, but my uncles...
said that Liberace, when he was when he was wasn't called whatever his real name was, he played at Wally's Wonder Bar, the piano.
Well, you've heard
that as well.
Yeah.
Great Matt
Damon movie.
Tickled the ivory at Wally's.
Yeah.
Yeah, the wonder bar.
Long gone.
So what's the significance of the junior mince?
Polly made sure she was a great employee of yours mentioned in the book of East Bay out on Harvard Business Review Press, which is prestigious.
Absolutely.
What's the significance of the junior
in the Mountain Dew.
When Polly first started with us, she was a high school basketball and volleyball player.
Okay.
And I would send her out to wallies to pick up a mountain dew for me.
And she probably wasn't supposed to, you know, nowadays you wouldn't, they won't let you in the bar, but they did then.
She was
probably 16
years old.
Yeah.
This was probably 1981 or two.
So
not to put you in a bad light, but I just, I just heard a story that someone told me that Rich Martin, one of our first
He would bring in a box of donuts and a USA Today during product presentations because he knew that he'd only have to deal with me then.
And not have to worry about your great ideas.
Great ideas.
Well, guys, I mean, it's been decades now since you exited the business and obviously decades since you started the business too.
What have you been up to in the meantime?
If you don't mind us asking.
Well, I've been.
We were busy on boards and things like that.
Yeah.
Community foundation in North Central Wisconsin.
Yeah.
And Rick always talks about it was impossible to replace, you know, the people we work with at East Bay.
Yeah.
So it was just, you know, we've looked and it just wasn't quite there.
So just have done charitable things.
Rick has been much more industrious than I am.
I've
been waiting outside wallies to open up again
with your trails up north.
So yeah, the windman trails in Manitowish waters and Winchester.
Yeah, Winchester up there.
I've been on that with my children.
Thank you very much for your generosity.
You're still walking and I made it through.
I did encouraging some
of those rock gardens are real fun.
I did take a fall and went head over heels over the front of the bike.
But it was wonderful.
I laughed the whole time.
So and my children laughed at me as well.
But thank you very much.
for that generosity.
Well, it
sounds picture perfect.
Great place.
Yeah.
Some of the people run into trees or they fall on the side.
Yeah.
It's the head over heels that everybody applauds for.
If there's one thing right to do,
it's fall
well.
Yeah.
Well, like you guys, it's good to have a talent.
Yeah.
You guys fell in love with each other.
Back in, what was it, the 70s, 60s?
When did you guys first meet?
1952, January 21st, I was two days old.
Oh, yeah, that's right in the hospital.
I was in the hospital and Rick, our parents said Rick was actually in the bassinet next to me.
No kidding.
Did your parents know each other too then?
No, they didn't.
But then later happened
to stand, which was a big part
of our business.
Yeah, yeah,
Serendipity, like three, four years later we
both parents move kind of close together, a couple of houses apart.
Okay.
And outside of my sisters, Rick's, you know, my parents and that Rick's probably the first person I remember.
So you still remember the first time
you kind of did anything fun together?
We haven't done that yet.
We're still
waiting.
If you call fighting fun.
How often are you arguing these days?
Just on the way in, we really had it on.
We were just standing out
in front of your door arguing.
I said, this isn't the right play.
He
said, yeah, this is the
right one.
So let's show it, prove it to me.
Yeah, it's got to have been old.
We rang the doorbell and no one came.
You guys grew up together.
You went to Catholic grade school together.
You separated.
Unfortunately, I'm sure those were very hard years with an art.
You had to go to UWSP.
And Rick, you went to Eau Claire, right?
Blue Gold, vice versa.
Yeah, blue gold.
Okay.
And then he came back together and you've been together ever since.
Well,
we never really left.
I mean...
He would come visit me in point and I would come visit him in Eau Claire during the college years.
I mean,
what are
the big, big hitchhiking years?
So it didn't cost that much to get to wherever you were going.
Really?
Yeah.
Okay, I like that.
What a friendship.
Yeah, no kidding.
I mean, were there other people that came and went along the way that tried to kind of get into your inner circle and gave Art a run for his money or?
We still have a lot of good friends from high school and college that we share.
So like Bill Roth and Johnny Levin,
Jesse,
and Joe Tudou, Chico, DeLaBarber, all these people.
There's a bunch of you.
Yeah.
Were any of the rest of them involved in the business?
No.
No.
Those poor saps.
We do have some.
I mean, Rick's brothers were my friends and they did get involved in the business.
Yeah.
So you
grew up together.
You go to school together.
You currently live next door to each other up
in northern Wisconsin, right?
Pretty much.
Well, not next door, but a mile, a lake apart.
And then down in Florida, you live close to each other down there as well.
Dick Johnson has joined you, we understand, down there?
Yeah.
Well, he was the
first
one
there.
Oh, OK.
He's the reason we're down there.
OK.
Good.
And then you grew up together and you get very, very wealthy together.
What a journey.
Certainly not a plan.
Not a plan.
It just kind of happened.
And your best friends after all these years, well, why don't we, if we could start at the beginning, the book of East Bay is out so we don't want to be too redundant.
And I know you're on a publicity tour now and Yankees Bookstore is going to have a line out the block and around it.
And what does the rest of the publicity tour look like?
Well, they wanted us to do a book signing and they suggested it and they said, well, we can do it in New York.
We can do it in Boston by Harvard and that.
We just kind of said, if we're going to do a book signing, it's just going to be in Wausau.
So that's why we're here.
And
it's
special.
Yeah.
Only in Wausau.
The book actually is out the 14th.
And but it's breaking a little early for this.
At Wisconsin's oldest bookstore.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I think he's bookstore.
Yeah, and sixth oldest in the whole country.
Well, they were our neighbor.
What a great
family tradition.
I have a question about
it.
And one of those things that makes Wausau pretty unique.
Absolutely.
What, you know, growing up, I mean, we think about the 80s and we talk about the 80s and 90s in Wausau all the time on the Wausau business show.
And there was Wausau insurance, Green Heck was taking off, obviously it had Wausau papers.
And then East Bay.
But East Bay was one that we give credit to for having the most impact on American culture.
The most reach.
It's the most.
I
know having air conditioning and airflow from Greenhack fan is pretty damn important.
But people didn't wait at their mailbox for a Greenhack fan.
Michael Jordan didn't wait for the Greenhack fan catalog.
Yeah.
Shack wasn't collecting fans in the 80s.
That's
for sure.
So obviously throughout your career, a lot of people probably, I'm imagining told you, you guys got to write a book and it took a long time to get there.
Why did it take so long to get this book?
Well, started.
Our kids had been bothering and not bothering us, asking us for years.
Cause I mean, can't
you see?
We have all these stories, our wives are best friends, our families are very good friends, everything, but in each other's weddings and you guys have to write a book.
We've heard all these stories.
write them down, you know, and all that stuff.
So we started out a
few years
ago.
We
really just kind of started out just taking it easy.
We were just going to write a memoir and good way to put it.
Then when East Bay closed down, Foot Locker closed down East Bay, we saw the things online, all these
former customers, LeBron James, Shaquille O'Neal, Stephen Curry.
Jerry Seinfeld.
Yeah.
All these
people came out of the woodwork and said, how much they loved getting the East Bay catalog and how it meant to them and brought back a lot of memories to us.
And we had hired a writer to help us with the memoir.
And he says, do you mind if I send this out and maybe, you know,
to a publisher or two and see what we think.
And so we ended up writing a book.
Yeah.
And not just any publisher, Harvard Business Review picked it up.
And what was it like when that moment happened for you guys?
Because obviously, Harvard Business Review writes some of the best business books out there and publishes some of the best business books out there.
What was it like to be signed to Harvard
Business Review?
We were very fortunate.
We've had a great editor from Harvard, Scott Bernardo.
And he worked hard with our writer, and yeah, that's how the book developed.
And Harvard in business has a big name, so I can't go wrong.
Do you consider it in some way a business book?
or a love story or a little bit of both.
Yeah.
Well, you know, I don't know that we have a whole lot of information to pass along to budding entrepreneurs.
I mean, we can certainly make stuff up like everyone else does.
Well, the chapter on the inventory problems really hit home with us here at Rocket Industrial, to be honest.
Yeah.
I mean, that was that was.
Thank you.
There are
lessons in the inventory issues you had for sure.
And you guys did not see eye to eye on inventory very often, it sounds like.
No, the peripherals we didn't see eye to eye and the quantity sometimes and the selection sometimes.
But when products, when there were products that were hot, we both jumped in right away full.
Because
you're kind of gambling at a certain level.
At Rocket, we know what our customers want and what they're going to buy pretty regularly.
In your business, putting out that catalog, it was not only a gamble to put the product placements in the right locations of the catalog, but also to buy the right quantities and feature the right products at the right times.
How did you guys come up with that
magic?
One of the big things that maybe somebody will take from this book is that this really was the golden years of the athletic industry.
I mean, all of the things that we see in the athletic industry today was first done in these golden years.
It was the first shoe that was dedicated to a specific athlete.
It was the first year that Nike Air Technology came out.
It was the first year the pump came out.
It was the first year there's a Shack shoe and a Stefan
Curry
shoe.
So we got a front-rule seat.
to watch that happen.
ESPN started during that time.
The internet eventually came along.
So we really had a great front row seat to see how all these things integrated and how they all blended together and worked together.
And so hopefully you'll see that as you read the book.
And that's one of the reasons as we got writing the book, we just said, God, we had a front row seat.
Let's pass some of this along.
anyone who may want to try something.
fix something, start something new, make something better, gets a sense of in the old days what it was like.
Well, and it kind of transitioned then from being athletic about athleticism and shoes for basketball stars to being mainstream sneaker culture and collectible sneakers.
I mean, you walk in and you see some of these people that have hundreds of pairs of sneakers and they keep them in the original boxes and it's a real culture.
I mean, that all was born out of
the East Bay catalog and the East Bay movement.
We certainly didn't start the sneakerhead movement.
I mean, that was New York in that.
But I think you poured gasoline on it.
I think you got to take credit for that part.
Rick's mission for us.
was to find the best products for athletes, for young athletes, high school and college athletes.
I thought it was to make a new form of junior men's.
And feel free to dig in those junior men's.
And that's what we've always set out to do, where we started small in northern Wisconsin.
And then after a few years, we started with a catalog and went a few states beyond that and a few states beyond that.
So we didn't start it, but I think we've been given some credit
from some of the sneakerhead people for kind of being the Johnny Apple seed of it and spreading it across the nation and to a couple of other parts of the world.
Yeah, because your catalog was
mass media, you know, it really publicized it.
And obviously we've talked about this before, but brick and mortar stores could only carry so many shoes.
Your catalog was much more prevalent in that regard.
What was the most challenging part besides the inventory and besides deciding to sell, which I wanted
get into that a little bit.
But as you were coming up and as the business was really exploding, what was the most difficult part for you two as best friends?
I don't know.
We had a difficult part, did we?
Yeah, it's right here on page 80.
We politely argued.
Yeah, sure.
Over tea.
My wife came one day to, I don't know, she was coming to
talked to me about something and walking upstairs to our office.
And I don't know if it was Judy or, I can't remember Lisa or Lisa maybe said, you don't want to go up there right now.
Speaking of tough times though, or tough things you had to get through.
How about the day when you were right downstairs here, went back in to move the final stuff from the old location next to Mirmans?
Yeah.
Mirmans and Wausau.
To the new one and three guys in suits show up.
from Nike and the lawyers.
Well, we knew they didn't work for us because they had nice clothes on and they'd take home their hair.
$500 suits,
yeah.
I think they were both, all of them had just shaved.
So they looked out of place.
So they looked a little out of place.
Right, right.
And then that led to a tough time for East Bay, obviously you persevered and the rest is history, but what, six years?
Not being able to promote Nike
Air?
Five or six years.
Without Nike.
Without Jordan.
Without Nike Air.
We did have Nike, but the Nike Air was 40% of
our business.
And they took it away that day.
Yeah, they really didn't know what mail order was.
Mail order was brand new.
And they liked us, I think.
They liked the team business.
They understood that.
Nike was very good at that always.
But mail order was kind of the wild west.
So looking back at it, we realized they had to get a handle on that.
Yeah.
At the time, weren't quite that happy about
it.
And mail order had a certain reputation, kind of.
Maybe it wasn't always the most up and up type of business in people's eyes, anyway.
At the time, probably not.
I mean, that was one of the hardest things we had to do at East Bay, and probably one of the best things about being in Washington.
get the trust of the people
to order from us.
By that, do you mean if you call in and make an order and give us your credit card, it's actually going to show up?
Is that what you mean by
trust?
Well, yeah.
Yeah.
You remember the early 80s, firstly, there probably wasn't a lot of mail order.
Yeah.
Only 50% had a credit card.
Okay.
Yeah.
And you wouldn't give your credit card to your mother, a number much less, some stranger over the phone.
And I do remember a guy from Boston calling in for, he wanted, I can't remember what shoe it was, but he
wanted to choose for his kid.
And he says, he wanted to talk to the president of the company or the head of the company.
So I happened to take the call.
And he just said, OK, where are you guys from?
I said, well, we're up in northern Wisconsin, Washington, Wisconsin.
He says,
I'm going to give you my credit card, but I want you guys, you know, I would never give us to anybody in New York or California, but you're in middle Wisconsin.
I will trust.
Nice.
Yeah.
I think you called it the Midwest trustee.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And in Wisconsin, you know, was Wisconsin, you're trying to build trust.
The people in Wausau was the number one rule is always a golden rule.
Treat people the way you want to be treated, which I'm sure you guys have found with the people you have and work hard.
And it was again,
As Rick said, so many things were just...
perfect for what we wanted to do and how we grew.
It worked out well.
So it just sort of blossomed and got bigger and bigger in the radius throughout the area of Wausau and then the Midwest and then nationally from there.
First of all, Wausau never got the catalog.
Wausau got a visit from you two if I
remember.
So the local area, we didn't get it because we had so we started with $4,000.
We had so little money in that.
So we keep working, keep putting money.
things in the inventory, which you guys probably do a lot of that, your profits.
Unfortunately.
Touchy subject.
You know, and it was always, you know, like how much, you know, we have to have the inventory.
If we're going to send a catalog to somebody, they can't get a picture and say, oh, we can't, we don't have that.
Right.
So we would try to grow sequentially across the United States.
We'd add another five or 10 states as we felt better.
And that, and remember when we sent these, there are no,
there's no kids descended to.
When we sent it out, they were just, if we'd sent out another five states, it was just to the coaches, coaches and basketball coaches and track.
And it worked organically from there.
We went from one person.
individual to five million individuals, high school individuals.
And more after we left as the company continued to grow.
So you grew this database basically of recipients of your catalog.
I mean, that must have in and of itself had a ton of value.
Harry brought that up too as well, where it was you guys knew exactly where the athletes were, where the best athletes were, and what their addresses were for the coaches as well, right?
No, not necessarily.
It was really, it was like I said, it's pretty organic.
And so we got to the point when we finally got our new software system, the one that took us from 87 till we left and then the footlocker changed over after they sold.
But
anyway, ERP system kind of deal?
I think so.
What was it called?
Sigma Micro,
a guy by the
name of Al Langston Camp,
went to
the University of Indiana.
Yeah, thanks, Al.
Thank you, thank you.
It was amazing, so we could track.
who bought, how often, what did they buy, where did they live.
And you start, you know, one of the things that really helped us grow, as Art said, is because it was organic.
One kid would tell another kid, or one kid would steal it from another kid, or one teacher would steal it from a kid in class, inside of his textbook, and leave it on his desk, and somebody would steal it from his desk and give it to another kid.
Well, this catalog right here was probably stolen.
This is your, let's see, it's your January of 97 issue, I believe it was,
It went to the... Crystal Johnson, we've referenced this before.
Crystal Johnson got this one from you guys.
She lives at... She lived at 7702 New York Drive in Tampa, Florida.
In fact, we just saw her, didn't we?
Hi, Crystal.
Wasn't she in Naples?
Wasn't she at the restaurant?
I think she was down there.
Or current resident, of course.
Yes.
So the catalog would go out and one of the... My favorite parts of the book is on page 101.
where the catalog would go out and it would hit the mailboxes and it says there were times in those days where we'd run out of people to answer the phones ringing.
We'd yell for anyone who was working, whatever they were doing.
They were told to just answer a call.
We need everyone on the phones.
We'd holler and people would come scrambling from the basement to help.
I mean, that had to be exciting and nerve-wracking.
Yes.
Rick and I would get on the phones, too.
We were the slowest order takers in the world.
We probably didn't help too much.
Well, no
one could read our writing when we first started, so we had to rewrite orders like six or seven times.
And later when we
timed, it was even slower.
So
darn nuns and their rulers over
the
knuckles.
The darn nuns.
No,
great
nuns.
Great nuns.
Yeah, great nuns.
But I mean, the call center itself exploded.
So when you guys exited the business, there were hundreds of people in Warsaw and Appleton
that we're just taking phone calls, basically 24 hours a day, seven days a week for East Bay shoes correctly.
Probably
2,000, yeah.
Yeah.
Between that,
2,000.
1,800, 826.
2206.
2205.
2205.
Yes.
Nice job, Rick.
Rick,
the
credit card is correct.
Okay.
Yeah, but can you guys tell us about the flipping of coins to make some decisions?
Is that fair to say?
Just once?
Just once.
Just once.
It was a pretty big one, though.
It was sizable.
Yeah.
Yeah, it was sizable.
And that was a flipping of the coin to sell to Footlocker and Woolworth?
He doesn't want to give it
away.
You got to keep him hanging.
That's a good point.
We can't give it
all away.
All right.
We won't give that away.
But let's talk about the decision to sell to Footlocker because it was
a very sad moment.
A little bit
of a
let down kind of.
Yeah, we've felt that emotionally I think in the book where obviously this was your baby to a certain extent and you guys had to take this thing public or not and it was obviously a financial decision as well.
And for 20
years you're go, go, go, go, go.
Yeah, constantly, constantly, constantly and all of a sudden it's like
So, maybe we didn't write the book clear enough, but that's not really how it happened.
That's not how you felt.
No, that's not how.
Maybe that's how I interpreted it as a, you know, just a little bit of like, we don't know.
Well, maybe
that's the value of the book.
Everyone will get a different feeling and
a
different direction.
It's like a beautiful song.
You interpret it any way you want to interpret it.
How old are
your children?
Six and eight.
So
there's going to be a day that you're going to have to let them go to college and get a job and stuff like that.
That's going to be hard.
But eventually you're going to say you have to let them do this for them to be their best.
And I think that's what we were struggling with.
Which way was the best way to go?
There were a couple of really good ways.
And we decided the best thing for East Bay, at least in my mind, was to partner with Footlocker.
Rick wanted to start.
One of the ideas was to start a lot of stores for help or growth.
And we'd actually thought of saying, well, maybe we should call Footlocker.
Maybe we can partner up with them.
Well, they had already been trying to buy us before that.
And when we went public, it wasn't within, I don't know, five months that they started coming back.
wanted to buy us again.
With a much better price, if I may add.
It was okay,
yeah.
Inflation,
you know.
It was just inflation.
Inflation, I'll do that to you.
Emotional, though, right?
I mean, your families and...
Well, we got a sturt on it when we went public.
Yeah.
And we lost the flexibility more there.
than we did when we sold the Foot Locker.
Because of the
SEC public and
public people and
charitable board and yeah.
Hitting your quarter numbers and everything else and it took away a little bit of, our whole life had been at East Bay lived in a risk.
We were undercapitalized, we were growing like wildfire and so trying to marry those two and making sure that we can put enough product in the catalog
to make sales keep growing.
And at the same time,
take money away from the catalog and put it into inventory.
So if somebody calls for something, we got it.
It was a tug-and-pull from day one.
And
First American, which became M&I, I believe, right?
Was that your bank then?
Originally, yeah.
And obviously, they were pretty good partners in helping you finance that growth, I'm assuming.
Yeah, and also then US Bank too.
So it's really strange when Rick talks about going public.
We were always under capitalized.
You're growing so fast, you have to have capital.
You have to keep money pouring in.
We didn't quite understand that.
You know, it was so hard to get a grip on.
And then when we were in public...
I mean, before that, we had a personal loan for $20 million.
Obviously, if you go into business, yeah.
You forgot to tell me.
But it was great.
You signed
on that?
As entrepreneurs,
we
just kept saying, that's fine.
You kept fighting.
But suddenly, you go public, and now you're risking general people that you know around here.
It's their money.
I felt worse risking their money than I did taking the risk, but it was just our risk.
So that was strange too.
I never thought of it that way.
What a great perspective to
say.
And when we started, we keep saying we had a front row seat, back when we first started, opening stores was a big deal to companies.
Towards the middle to late 80s, it wasn't so exciting anymore because they had the stores open.
So, during the growth of the athletic industry, part of their growth was going from having a lot of extra inventory because they're always trying to open stores.
And as the stores got open, they pulled back because they knew financially they couldn't have that much inventory.
They couldn't take a risk.
were able and got lucky through, I think, Art had the idea.
But we were able in the early years to live off of that excess inventory they had, because we could order.
We knew how many schools we were going to.
We knew how many catalogs we sent out.
We knew how many orders we were getting from those catalogs.
And what color they were.
And we knew what percentage basketball versus baseball versus volleyball versus, you know, my sandals that I sat with on my desk getting a suntan, looking orange like, you know, other people.
And we would order from their team bank almost on a daily basis.
So we knew we were going to five more schools the next two days.
So we knew about how many shoes we would sell.
We would make up an order for those shoes.
They would come in after we finished at the schools and we have 30 days to pay for it.
So they literally financed our inventory growth until they got to the point where they went public and they had to be more
financially stable or financially responsible.
So again, we were there at the right time doing this kind of thing.
And it allowed us to use their money to grow our inventory,
which helped us
make more catalogs.
Sure.
Yeah.
Can we talk about what each of you were responsible for?
Because you guys elaborate maybe even more than in the book a little bit.
But I know Ricky was responsible for kind of the marketing side.
But typically, you know, in the Harvard Business Review books that I've read, there tends to be
somebody that is more the operational side and somebody that's more on the kind of visionary creative side.
And then maybe there's a finance person or something like that.
No, who played those roles or did you share those roles?
We were just one person.
Yeah, with one mind.
I mean, I probably tended more towards the operational to the creative.
I was probably more into the bind and inventory, but we both did both all the time.
Rick is it was the perfect combination because Rick's a
perfectionist, dreams up a lot of ideas.
I'm the one who wants it done now.
So when you put those two together, I mean, you know, someone who's like myself, I'm happy with good, which is the opposite of great.
You know, the enemy is
great.
Don't let
perfection get in
the way of progress.
And
perfection is a little bit of the enemy of getting things done.
So between the two of us,
We did a pretty good job together.
Well, I know always together.
I know Polly, who delivered those junior men to their Mountain Dew.
And I know Polly well enough to know that she knows how to get things done.
So
she did.
We had so many people do that.
I mean, we just were so fortunate that.
A couple of my brothers, three of my brothers, were in between jobs or had just graduated and were looking.
And Polly was a wonderful thing.
Coaches would recommend people to us, which was a big help.
We got kids from Marathon and Edgar who would come in and
ask.
That's pronounced Marathon.
Yeah,
Marathon.
Marathon ski and DC Everest.
And so we got people who could work under pressure who were used to being
told what to do, just kidding by coaches.
But they made wonderful employees and they were athletes themselves.
So when they could see that we were servicing athletes, they were so wonderful to buy into the culture and buy into the vision.
And you stuck with that model your whole time, right?
Like let's hire athletes.
Those are our employees.
Well, you remember we only had five million customers or names when we left and I don't know, did it get to nine million?
By the time it closed, I can't remember.
But
there's, what, 318 more million out there that we didn't have.
Well, I know when we were going to Wausau West High School, it seemed like every other kid either worked at the telephone call center or at your distribution center.
And all of them would kind of whisper throughout the halls of Wausau West, hey, Jerry Seinfeld bought some shoes for me yesterday.
I heard
David
Letterman one year.
David Letterman was on the list.
Because every other day someone would come in with a story about who called into East Bay.
And I'm sure one-tenth was true.
But do you guys still
jog together?
We walk now.
Now you walk.
So usually with our wives.
So we'll get together and then walk.
But we have dinner a lot together, that type of thing.
Rick's daughter the other day said, I don't think I remember a day in my life where you guys did not talk.
Yeah, that's a special relationship and a bond.
And you
guys are good friends, too, with the business, so it's kind of cool.
Yeah, there's some parallels.
Now, it can be done.
Who's closer to Phil Knight and Kevin Plank?
Are you guys still friends with those guys?
Or Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, and Kevin Plank, the founder of Under Armour?
Phil was hard on us, but he was very good to us.
And we're not friends with Phil.
He's probably in a...
He's with the Elon Musk's of the world.
And you two don't roll with Elon Musk, then, in other words.
I mean, the last time it's in the book, the last time, I think, one of the last times we saw Phil, he came over and said, if it's after we're in public, he says, no, isn't this much better than suing each
other?
Yes, great line from the book.
But Kevin Plank, the founder of Under Armour, has some nice things to say about you in the book.
And on the back of the book, you guys were credited
for allowing under armor to take off?
Well, part of it, I mean, you remember who our list was.
They were 12 to 24 year olds and a vast, vast majority of them were athletes who were trying to be as good an athlete as they possibly could.
And Kevin came out with some truly amazing new products that made their working out that much more comfortable than look better at the same time, which you can't go wrong if you can look better and get in better shape at the same time.
Yeah.
Amen
to that.
With a
great name.
Yeah.
Kevin, I says, when you came in and our buyer pulls us out and so we could look at this stuff and I says, Under Armour, what a great name.
I hated it.
So why didn't we come up with that?
Well, I know how you came up with the name East Bay because it was the Milwaukee store.
But have you been in this office that we're sitting in right now before?
Couple times because there's a with Jim talking to him from Nike Yeah, there's a little bit of a significance to the office that we're sitting in here and the we would not we wouldn't be here But we wouldn't be in this beautiful office had it not been for you guys
because Nike came in here because of East Bay and Foot Locker and they set up showrooms in this office prior to us being in here that were exact replicas of their Foot Locker stores and they would invite East Bay and Foot Locker buyers in here to sell them shoes.
And so this became a office that Nike gave us a song and a dance on because it was all done before we moved in and they had a beautiful office.
office in here, and the only reason they were here was because of what you two started.
So the only reason we are here in this office is because of you two in a roundabout way.
Thank you.
So you could have had nicer walls without the paint peeling and the shipping in the corners.
You probably could have really had a nice place.
So we apologize.
Sorry.
When
we were in the facility, it was a little bit different seeing that than when they would open their bag and throw the new Air Jordan on the floor and say, oh, here's our new shoes for this next
six months from now.
That's part of the evolution of the industry that we talk about.
Again, being in that front row seat, we got to see them grow up and learn what the best techniques for their company was to send out reps.
to sell goods.
I mean, they were growing and learning, too, along with you guys.
Yeah, absolutely.
Big company, but, you know, in 1987, when they did what they did with their decision to not allow you to put Nike Air in the catalog, they'd probably changed and evolved in 92 or 93 when they said, let's do it finally again.
I
mean, they
were
probably a different company.
It's amazing that, uh, Wasonian Dick Johnson, who you're still friends with, hired by you guys and Harry along the way, became
President and CEO, right?
Well, right after Harry.
Yeah, after Harry left.
Yeah, after Harry left, Dick Johnson was the president and CEO.
You guys took it public, then sold to Footlocker.
Dick Johnson was around the whole time.
You guys depart the company and Dick Johnson winds up going from East Bay to Footlocker and winds up being the global CEO of Footlocker for many, many years, growing their business by billions and billions of dollars all because of you two.
Well, just when we left, Harry was president then.
And then when he left, Dick took over.
So that's the sequence of events.
But Dick became global CEO and just retired a handful of years ago, right, from Footlocker?
Well, Dick did that on his own.
He's a class act and he was super talented.
He came in to our bind department at the time and
really help put some structure to it that allowed us to take even more risks, educated risks, and helped our buyers become even better at what they were doing.
But he's just a class act.
I think you hear stories, but I think he's been rated the best CEO of Footlocker Woolworth.
or whatever.
We were lucky enough to go on vacation with him a couple years ago to Italy and he had retired and he was still going into stores and the store managers were just foaming at the mouth to see him.
Yeah, because they have foot lockers all over the world.
Yeah.
But they knew who he was.
Dick had the reputation of touring the most stores of any CEO in foot locker history.
He loved being out in the stores.
He loved talking to the people, getting to know who they are.
He just
He's a smart guy, class act.
Do you guys miss East Bay and your days?
No, not anymore.
No?
For first, what, 10 minutes after we
left?
I
don't believe it.
I don't
believe it.
So when you read in the book, one of the things when we had dinner with Harold Baines, a baseball player, Hall of Famer, and I'll just never forget asking him like, well, you're so fortunate.
How do you feel being able to play baseball at the level you did?
And he goes,
Art, this is a great life.
I'm blessed.
And he was there with his wife and he says, but I, you know, it's a lot of travel and I really miss my wife and kids.
So I think our priorities have always been our family.
And so when we moved on, it was, you know, we became a little more, after our 12-hour days for 20 years, became a little more time, you know, at home and helping with the family, I think.
Rick learned how to, I think, dust the floor to them.
No, you're talent.
They
have
those robot
factories now.
I can sit in my chair and just watch it go.
You
learn
how
to change the batteries in that thing.
You
guys can afford a couple of those robots now, right?
No, I lost my train of thought.
Well, that's all right.
Well, you must miss something about what you left behind and chose to leave behind.
And what are those things?
No, it's just like wassa.
You don't have to be here to be home.
And it's the same as...
with East Bay.
The memories are so strong that you don't have to be there to do it.
And it was so fun to watch from the outside to see some of these people just grow up and go from a doer of things, as Polly called them, to really finding a niche.
And we had people who stayed there for over 30 years and probably had seven or eight jobs along the way until they finally found where they fit the best and then they just
Luckily bought into the vision and stayed but are you know when we
When we were starting, we didn't have kids.
Yours are what?
Yours are 85, 80, and you have 85, 86.
I have an 86 and then 88 and you have an 87.
I
think we covered the whole decade.
But the
point
being
that they were so young,
and
by the time it was time for us to go, they were at the time when we could start coaching again.
They were at the ages that we could get back on the ice or we could go to the baseball diamond.
or the soccer fields and that really made a difference in not having to miss East Bay too much.
But it was the best job we've talked about.
We couldn't imagine a job being better.
We couldn't imagine people
pulling together like that for that long a period of time.
It ruined our lives because we couldn't go on after.
We didn't want to do anything else because we couldn't take the people away.
Yeah.
It was
tremendous fun.
And you said that there were people that worked there for 30 years and poured their heart and souls into East Bay's success and loved it.
I know Polly in the book, she's quoted as saying, some people want to go back to high school or college.
I want to go back to East Bay.
If you guys had a couple words to say to all of the employees that that you had over the years, what would those words be?
Well,
how
much time do we
have?
Do you have
kids?
Do you have to be home still for dinner or something?
We have plenty of time.
Happy hour
is coming
up,
but
other than
that, nothing.
Just, boy, thanks for being great teammates.
We had a great team and everybody pitched and did it.
And it was so fun to watch them believe in themselves and believe in what we were doing.
And those are two special things because you can do one without the other, but you very rarely see it.
together and those people made it happen.
That's one of the things that we kind of kept us from writing the book is we didn't want to be the East Bay story.
Art Nye, we wanted the people who work there to be the East Bay story.
They're the ones that deserve to have the book.
written about them in that art night.
Well, you mentioned a ton of people in the book.
They're made up names.
We haven't fact checked it yet because we don't do that.
Never have, never will.
But they're just examples of, you know, a lot of them from the early days.
I mean, do you look more fondly back at those early 80s, mid 80s days than you do towards the end of your run?
Or is it all just a growing animal and you loved every minute of it?
Loved every minute.
Yeah.
It was hard.
First, you know, we didn't make any money the first few years, you kind of wouldn't like, yeah, what do you know, think
about
this.
Our wives were supporting us.
So, I mean, if you're an entrepreneur, make sure you have a good support group.
You know, and during the run, we had like eight or nine different business plans.
So, it's like we started eight or nine different businesses along the way,
all
under the same name.
that everyone has its own special memories.
And all along the way, especially in the beginning, you had people second-guess you and say, you know, they're doomed for, I forget the quote exact.
My father-in-law, yeah.
He went to the in-laws.
Is that Doc Molinari?
Yeah, Doc Molinari,
yeah.
Well, you'll see in the book, it goes back to as we were talking about Greenhack, Bob Greenhack.
told A.J.
Mullineros, let her do this.
This is going to
be okay.
Another visionary saw what other visionaries
see.
Guys, unfortunately, we're out of time.
I hope you can come back next week and we'll do part two.
That was a quick hour.
That was awesome.
You know what you do here is really cool.
You do it really very, very well, so thanks.
Thank
you.
Well,
we
love
Lawson.
We do it for you, and it's been an honor.
Thank you
very
much.
Good to have you guys.
The Book of East Bay,
everybody.
That's for everyone.
That's for everybody.
I will get it!
What does it
take to run a successful business?
It takes incredible courage to start at the beginning, incredible grit to achieve success, incredible determination to sustain results, and incredible perseverance to leave a legacy.
But most importantly, it takes an incredible local partner dedicated to helping you achieve your goals,
At Incredible Bank, we are that partner.
Let us help your business do the incredible.
Incredible Bank, member FDIC.
It's a loss on
business show.
Season two, episode 68.
I can't
believe we've made it.
Where are they now?
Where
are they right
now?
Currently.
In the present moment, we need to know.
Of course he picked up.
Obviously.
He's the best.
Who's on the show next week, Paul?
Well, we're going to have Art and Rick back next
week.
to finish up, so they're walking out right now.
See you guys.
Bye-bye, guys.
But they're gonna come back,
they said, next week.
It's the first time that we've extended for two weeks.
Yep.
Talking about one business.
Right.
One wassup business.
Well, if it's gonna be one wassup business, I put East Bay right at the top of that list.
Amen, brother.
Yeah.
So until next week, it's good to be back.
Good to be back.
Season two.
Now, how does the end go again?
You always say
from
high
atop
a certain
place.
Oh, okay.
Our favorite
place.
Right.
From high
atop rib mountain.
Good job.
I'm Ryan and I'm Paul and this has been a wassup
business show
transmission
I like the snake skin, I like them buckaroos I like my leather shined up with a shade of blue I like the black cherry alligator pointed toe I wear them out till those holes on the outsole They go at everything, I take them everywhere Lil mama came with a man but she still stand down I probably don't need no more but the second I walk through the door I tell them give me two
pairs of blue KC's All white shirt and some bouquet jeans I go on
This
has been a Warsaw business show transmission.
All rights reserved, 2526.
