0:00 have you seen yourself on uh Alibaba yet fake barbell there's fake barbell Stu you didn't see that there's been fake Barb they're using pictures of you to sell it no way awesome congrats bro I've seen barbell stuff show up on eBay and stuff oh that's my eBay [Laughter] [Music] account and we are back again with a SI episode of the careful boys and today we are blessed still to have BD here with us B okay so of course it's very natural we are all learning boys and we're so honored to have you here we can't just talk about all your successes we want to ask about some of the biggest setbacks hardships or failures that you feel like you've experienced as well in your journey never been any that's a professional we
0:52 suck we that's hardcore imagine be serious that'll be so sick though I was born just moonwalking just Immaculate what the um obviously for me probably the biggest setback issue so I kind of mentioned earlier so that 0809 recession kind of rocked a lot of businesses in the US um that hit us really hard it kind of like dominoed with like some of our retailers starting to file bankruptcy damn they file bankruptcy then all of a sudden we lose those receivables that they owe us and they're like like okay so we had a couple file really quick um I want to say it was like late 08 early 09 um which was pretty huge cuz we had probably lost
1:42 like a million dollars in receivables like really fast and then can we ask some specifics about who they were yeah I'd say it was a retailer in Southern California like a Till's or active or a fer that was hung on zies department store that active yeah oh active they did file Chapter 11 remember that also the vendors like they're I mean the retailers done so then they couldn't even buy from you guys anymore well they owe them so they couldn't even pay them cuz a lot of the accounts are often like net 30 to 90 so they'll they'll have your product but they they can't pay it out so and that's you know that's kind of a part of us business and what bankruptcy protection is you know so you essentially walk away as a business owner from any of your unsecured debt
2:33 and you still are on the hook for any of your secured debt so any of your receivables are typically unsecured unless they're factored so once somebody files if they owe you say a million dollars then you maybe will get five cents on the dollar holy fast forward create a chain reaction which it did yeah kind of hit that and I mean you guys remember that time it was crazy with like housing and everything so that rolled into retail retail got really tough um Pac Sun at the time used to do a lot of Footwear I want to say we were doing somewhere in the neighborhood of probably about 10 million a year with them in Footwear and then just with them yeah wow and then they decided that they're not doing Footwear anymore they're going to focus
3:23 on a perel so then you take like a large chunk of sales just like gone uh and then it was 09 and B OFA right they were in all their issues and they were essentially should have been filing bankruptcy the government bailed them out and then what they did was they focused on companies um with small business loans um that was kind of one of their objectives is like Hey we're going to clean up for them uh clean up their balance sheet and kind of try to remove any of the debt with small business loans which for them would kind of be loans between like 10 and 30 million and we kind of sat right in the middle of that um so we ran into a lot of issues with them
4:13 um and uh that kind of went on 09 10 and they just drain the living ████ out of us I mean that's like was probably the worst time ever like working with a large Financial partner that just absolutely just drilled us um so we kind of fast forward fast forward and then 11 um we were very active about um trying to find a new business partner similar to what you were trying to do on barbell um we had a little more like business than that you know is like that we're trying to sell um but which is really tricky when you're trying to sell your business and the sales have decreased your banks on your back it's you're kind of it's It's a tricky sell um but uh so we spent most of 11 trying
5:05 to find a buyer for DVS and Maddox um we ended up finding a buyer um and then kind of last minute that buyer had pulled out and we really had no other way to go than to file uh bankruptsy so we ended up going and filing and the way it works we filed um in in a way that basically creates like a bidding auction right so we still had business there was our IP for the brands was was valuable so basically what happens is you go in um you get you kind of gather with you know an investment banker a group of people potentially that would want to purchase you um and then it starts out just as
5:57 like auction kind of bidding at a c certain amount and then these businesses are basically bidding on your business and are they are they buying it like kind of our discount because you are oh yeah cuz you're distressed yeah so the banks it's like a house foreclosure yeah yeah wow yeah so like the bank is there um which was our you know secured secured creditor and then you had I don't know call it a dozen or 15 or so people bidding on it are they mostly like private equities and stuff for like what kind of groups yeah they're kind of like yeah usually those you kind of will call like more like bottom feeder kind of people like there was a couple Action Sports guys which was really cool that really wanted the the brands to take the brands um but majority of them were other you know kind of like bigger
6:49 conglomerates a lot of them like to just you know kind of take them own the IP and then they can take it to kind of downstairs business you know which be like you'll be in Kmart or something yeah like Max and they just license it and you know it's a good business you know when I first met with him and his other business partner his specific word that he would call the private Equity guys ████ leeches that's what it made me laugh he's like they're going to come in and just ████ everything up everything you about just ████ burn it all they don't care about longevity uh and at that point are they coming in and bidding to take 100% of the company or do you do you still have to stay on for a certain period of time uh so no the way those work are or the way it worked for us is so they're coming in to bid on it it was like one day you're it's
7:40 almost in like kind of a meeting room kind of thing in a hotel and then once you kind of finish that that day with like a bidder um then the next day you actually do it in court so you go to court it's official wow you know um the good thing in our scenario for this is it it finish in kind of the meeting day and then it went to court and then the judge will actually ask is anybody you know basically they still keep it open there's kind of one last shot and which worked out well for us is like there became this kind of bidding war with two two companies in court which was huge for us because as they kind of bid on and this went on all day long so it went higher and higher yeah and so it got to a point where it basically the thing that it does it cleared all the secured
8:30 debt and then any additional goes into unsecured right so then that goes into like unsecured so um yeah in the end in the scenario not great personally but at the end of the day I learned I'd say a huge life lesson of something you don't really want to learn but you kind of have to um in a short amount of time and uh yeah and then literally go the next day um it had got purchased by sequential brands which is no longer now but they owned a bunch of stuff and then literally they came to the office the next day and introduced themselves you know cool guys um I was kind of already had made up my mind that with whatever group for the most part I would say whatever group I made up my mind after
9:20 that the next day and they came in and we had our initial conversation they essentially are going to own the businesses now and I'm probably about a half hour in into it I asked my brothers I said hey can you guys excuse us I stepped out with both my brothers and I just said hey guys I'm out you guys are can kind of stay on I'll kind of frame it up do what you want to do you decided you're just done with it um so we came back in and I was like you guys I'm great to meet you guys uh I'm going to step out and um so anyways I did that I just kind of like you know I just felt like I needed to do something else and i' worked on this kind of a certain way for so long and not that I was like stuck in my ways but I'm like I just don't see me like wanting to work with this new group you know what up guys thank you for watching us for so long if you like what we do please support our
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11:00 those months just there's so much kind of that was built these Brands was like it was like our blood I mean that's what we did like that was like our identity um so that part was really tricky I think I got kind of stuck in just like I need to figure out how to get through this bankruptcy piece and I I don't say I had blinders on but I was just like very heavily focused on that and that's why it was so easy for me to get to that meeting and make a quick decision of like I really had nothing else planned but I was like I know I don't want to do this um but yeah I think I was you know it was definitely a very difficult like time in my brain of just like kind of processing everything um and I just kind of made this kind of gut decision of like I'm going to step away um but within like not even a week
11:52 within a couple days um I had been already working with um Mike West which Jes 686 you know Mike yeah I met it was a funny I met him at uh at one of Bobby's parties okay and then we're just talking and then uh there was just another guy sitting at like a table and then I forgot how we got to talk and then and then I was probably all sad like no one wants to buy bar or whatever and then and then he was started uh then he mentioned he's like oh you know what you should talk to this guy and I'm like this guy this guy he goes yeah the lawyer and that's how we we found out that we uh our connection was you then uh yeah so like Mike West bought BD's company and I was oh ████ this is crazy what a small world yeah so um I met up with Mike like really quick and um Mike
12:45 had very wellestablished uh snowboard outerwear brand which he had started ████ in the early 90s I mean at my store I was buying his brand um and then he was looking for a way to kind of balance snow outerwear business with you know um apparels typically year round so anyways within like literally a week um we teamed up he went to sequential he bought Maddox from them and then I had brought kind of a crew over um that I had on the Maddox side over to 686 which their umbrella company is called Westlife wa wait so you say you had to sell your company sequential and then you met a dude who was bigger and richer and they came over to sequen and bought some ████ from them yeah that's sick yeah that's crazy so then he so you kind
13:36 of got your brand back in a way or yeah so Mike purchased it which you know we went it together and then I came over to Westlife which is 686 to operate it under Westlife um and then we worked on it from like 2012 through like 2016 and then we ended up trying to first we were trying to sell it and then we ended up licensing it in 2017 to uh thread collective in Canada so where were where were your brothers in that situation so they stayed on um with the new um people that purchased DVS maybe for 6 or eight months um and then they ended up getting let go from there and then they went over and they started a
14:26 blank t-shirt company called uh m42 so you know just like buying blanks and stuff so they ran that business for I don't know another five years or something um now they're kind of out of the apparel space um but yeah they kind of they went from that to doing apparel stuff did did you step in out uh in that faithful meeting when sequential came over did that affect your relationship with your brothers or anything no not at all they were they were just cool with you like not wanting to do it anymore yeah yeah wow it was I mean we had gone through so much at that time I don't think it was you know what I mean I think they're more like yo what are you going to do and I was like ████ I don't know what if it was like that in that meeting all three of you all three of you guys were like I don't want to come back then what would have happened we probably would had a lot more like negotiating power at that moment just
15:18 because you know cuz they need you still yeah I mean there's just's a lot to figure out when you're like running a business whether you're doing it right or wrong there's still a lot to figure out looking back um when you know what happened was pretty much the economy but do you do you go oh man um what I know with what I know now this is how we could have uh kept going or saved it do you would you do you do you know like you know I think um with a business especially when you get at that kind of level and you have that amount of employees and staff and as Trends start to change or you know so with the economy what you saw really quick right right so we were selling say shoes you know that were $75 to $90 retail right all of a sudden people want to buy shoes that are like 50 to 60
16:09 bucks right so just like everything kind of changes and I think the biggest thing you learn is like you got to react quickly you can't wait you know which sucks because you know a lot of your expenses with a business typically are overhead right and the last thing you want to do is like yo I got I got to let B go you know what I mean but um I think one of those things it's real tricky cuz you got to kind of like level set quickly um and you know and then I think along with that you also have to make sure do you have the right product going into whatever this new era of recession is do you have the right marketing like you know but I think just being able to react quickly is probably the biggest Learning lesson I see can you say at
16:59 your guys's Peak what you guys were grossing annually uh I think their largest year like combined with Brands were like 115 115 million wow jeez that's crazy do you do you feel like um the bigger that businesses go the more you have to consider with like macroeconomics and is that something that you kind of take into consideration now like when you plan for and not just in the US too I mean we're selling you know kind of all over right so there's a lot of things just with you know uh the dollar like there's just there's everything foreign currency exchange kind of starts to affect what you're doing so I mean the US is kind of one thing but once you
17:51 start doing that kind of business globally then you're like having to watch what's going on in all the economies you know D that's n fig in 20 2007 right and prior to um at that when we hit that that would have been like probably 08 I'd say if I think 0708 well yeah it was one of those years was kind of the biggest right before everything kind of like that was all your companies combined that was the three yeah I see well did you ever have to deal with like uh counterfeiting um yeah but it wasn't that huge you know um and it would pretty much be more like you know stuff in China and we really didn't have like retail or distribution there so it wasn't really affecting a lot it would just be there's stuff in the market ah okay but it wasn't like if
18:43 it was here and you have stuffff in the market yeah uh but there wasn't that much of it which maybe says it wasn't that popular huh that's when you know you hit it good when you got a lot of counterfeit yeah he has a lot of it now have you seen yourself on uh Alibaba yet fake barbell there's fake barbell St you didn't see been fake bar they're using pictures of you to sell it no way awesome congrats bro I've seen barbell stuff show up on eBay and stuff people reselling oh that's my eBay account Le that's me yeah yeah they turned it up and there's there's product reviews on them too and people are like it's actually kind of close to the real thing that's a good review that's an
19:33 honest review what are they doing on that site
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