Ben Gilbert: uncertainty

Transcript context

…That's the success on the field, on Astroturf fields. It's the success in track. That year, this is 1972, Blue Ribbon's first full year doing sales as Nike purely on their own, they do $3.2 million in revenue. Remember just a couple of years before, their last full year with Tiger, they're doing half a million dollars in revenue. They go from all the crazy drama ending the Tiger relationship, starting up their own factory production, making the waffle trainer to be $3.2 million fully financed by Nissho. What a great spot to be in. Nike is designing their own shoes and going direct to the manufacturer. I think the benefit to the business at this point is not margin expansion. It's purely aliveness. Can we convince people to buy things from us that aren't Onitsuka Tigers? To this point, it's still unproven if it's, hey, Blue Ribbon has great distribution, and people will buy anything from these guys because we trust the company, or if it's, people really wanted Onitsuka Tiger because they were really good shoes for runners, and I don't really want whatever this new thing you're selling is. Yes, and it turned out that it was the former. People were definitely willing to buy Blue Ribbon shoes and to buy Bill Bowerman shoes regardless of Tiger and Onitsuka.…

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