WWE, Netflix—and the baby-faced rival who wants to body slam them
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I'm Yasmin Gagne. I'm Josh Christensen. And this is Most Innovative Companies.

On today's episode, Fast Company Deputy Editor David Lidsky. Rasslin. I'm from the South. That's R-A-S-S-L-I-N apostrophe Rasslin. Rory founder and CEO Joe Kudla. The truth is the clothing business is a dirty business. And of course, keeping tabs. The head of a super PAC decided to solve a thousand piece puzzle and spent that entire week doing it in front of his staff. But first, here's the download.

This is the news you need to know this week in the world of business and innovation.

First up, Tesla is recalling almost 200,000 vehicles. This comes after Elon Musk's EV carmaker found that software instability may cause issues with the backup camera. People who live in cities and have to parallel park are quaking in fear because I cannot park without a backup camera. I can't park with and without a backup camera. Well, you famously don't know how to drive. Famously don't drive.

This affects certain 2023 models. So Tesla initiated a recall on January 12th and will notify owners starting on March 22nd. Amazon is dropping its iRobot acquisition. And no, that is not the Will Smith movie from like 2005. Somewhere around there. Honestly, I need to watch iRobot again, actually. It really holds up because AI is a thing now. Is it? Yeah.

And smart robots are a thing soon. Yeah, I just remember that those robots were just like, they made those robots like way too sexy in a way that was weird. It was in a way that was like, don't do that. Stop, stop doing that. We did go through a sexy robot moment when Battlestar Galactica was also on. Oh, yeah. On Monday, the tech giant abandoned plans to acquire iRobot for $1.4 billion, a

after antitrust regulators in the EU and US seemed likely to block the deal or propose a lawsuit. Following the news, iRobot cut 31% of its staff and its CEO stepped down. Amazon will pay iRobot a previously agreed upon $94 million cancellation fee. Honestly, if Amazon wants to pay me a $94 million cancellation fee, go for it. We'll end this podcast. Honestly, I would cancel this podcast for a lot less than $94 million.

Okay, next story. Rite Aid continues to close stores. The pharmacy giant announced an additional 55 store closures following a series of closures in the fourth quarter after filing for bankruptcy in October. So your dad is a Walgreens manager. When this news came out, did you call him like, we did it, Joe? No.

The announcement impacts stores in 14 states. Now, AI companies will need to start reporting their safety tests to the U.S. government. Definitely makes me feel safer in this country and protected from AI technology. It makes me feel less safe knowing that they weren't reporting it to anyone before. Josh, that was clearly a joke. This changes nothing. We're all screwed.

We're very cheery and optimistic on this podcast. As part of the Biden administration's executive order passed in October, the Commerce Department will start requesting AI systems safely test results from AI developers. Nine federal agencies have completed risk assessments about AI's use in critical national infrastructure, like the electric grid. Don't want them to attack our electricity. Yeah, leave our grid alone.

And finally, Stanley tumblers, which if you haven't heard of Stanley tumblers, get out from under the rock you're living in. Everybody has one and everybody's spending way too much money on them. Okay, I like flat Stanley better than Stanley tumblers if we're going to rank Stanley. Justice for flat Stanley because you know what flat Stanley doesn't include? Lead.

So Stanley tumblers may contain lead. That's the story that came out after some TikToker started posting about their quenchers testing positive for high levels of lead. The cups manufacturer Pacific market international said there was no lead present on the surface of any Stanley product that comes into contact with the

consumer, which means you probably won't get lead poisoning from your Stanley Cup. Listen, I'm too broke to own a Stanley Cup, but now I feel good. Now I feel better. Sipping out of my Yeti like a pleb. And that's today's download.

Josh, if you were a wrestler, what would your name and persona be? If I were a wrestler, what would my name and persona be? It's clearly the iron jaw because your jaws are sized. It's very easy. It's the iron jaw, the rubber jaw. It's a rubber thing. I'd be the rubber jaw. That would be my name. Scary. Scary.

scary, super, whatever you say to me bounces off of me and sticks to you. I am rubber. You're like the anti-bullying wrestler. I'm not super comfortable in like singlets, so I'd be the most clothed wrestler that would come out of there.

And I would clearly be a heel. That seems to be my go-to. I would not be a face, and certainly not a baby face. I'm just a big, bald, white guy. I love that. I love that. There we go. What about you? I mean, you are, as we will talk about a little bit, from wrestling royalty in this upcoming interview. Josh, I could beat you up. I'm sure you could. I'm like a feral monkey out there. You have no idea what's going on.

So it's not a high bar. I'm not very confrontational. I use my words, Yaz. No, I'd be like... Claws and teeth. I think my thing would be that I just have like a shitty attitude, but I'd be like really unpredictable. You would, your persona would just be a baby boomers characterization of Gen Z. That's exactly it. No, no, I'd be a shitty millennial. Oh.

Oh, yeah, that's a great persona. I'd walk out in a girl boss t-shirt. And a pussy hat, like the pink pussy hats. Yeah, my signature move could be the lean in. Just like lean on someone. Oh, my God. Honestly, if you think that this banter is ridiculous, just wait till you hear this conversation that we had. First, we're actually going to talk about a story I wrote.

I spent the past few months profiling All Elite Wrestling founder and CEO, Tony Khan. Here to talk about it is my editor, Fast Company's deputy editor, David Lidsky. Hey, David. Hi, Yaz. Yes, podcast superfan number one in the house, here to turn the tables on you, be the interlocutor, and in the words of the legendary comedian Richard Pryor,

Hope I'm funny. This is really just an episode like on different shows where like the biggest fan gets to come on and do a guest role. Yeah. And several years ago did a story on this guy named only known as Shampoodler, who was a frequent. You're like kind of friends with him now. I was an internet friend of his for a while. I don't know what happened to Shampoodler, but yes, he would contribute to the Doughboys and the late lamented Twitch morning show, Jack AM. And yeah,

Yeah, we did a profile for him and it was very weird and wonderful. Yes, anyway. So it's kind of like that, but if I was also your editor at Fast Company, which I am.

It's part guest role for fan, part undercover boss. Yeah. I didn't win a contest to be here. And if this doesn't go well, Yaz is fired. Tell you what, I've actually never been interviewed about anything. One kid I mentored interviewed me about my sense of style and it was a disaster. Well, I mean, this is why we're in an audio medium. I love jeans. Let's talk about your return to hard pants. Let's do it.

I'm here. That's why I'm here. Shall we talk about some wrestling? Let's talk about some wrestling. Wrestling. I'm from the South. That's R-A-S-S-L-I-N apostrophe wrestling. Yeah. So, yes, there was some exciting news in the world of sports entertainment, specifically worldwide entertainment.

wrestling entertainment last week. Tell us about what happened, you know, sort of why everyone is talking about wrestling right now. I mean, you spelled out WWE because... I may not have said it correctly, but yes. No, no, there should be three Ws, but they just dropped one. Very confusing. So starting in January next year, WWE's flagship series called Raw will be moving to Netflix. Netflix has been sort of trying to make live content work for a while, I think with mixed results. Yeah.

Bad results? Well, who's to say? I mean, no one really knows. I tried to watch that Love is Blind live finale. Oh, okay. I watched the Chris Rock live special whenever that was. It was okay. All right. I guess that worked. I guess. Well, so WWE will still have some streaming shows on Peacock, still has pay-per-view offerings, but now Raw will be on Netflix. Also...

And this was kind of in the announcement, but now... Actually, I received a separate announcement just about this, but yes. Dwayne The Rock Johnson is joining the board of TKO Group, and TKO Group is the conglomerate that owns UFC and WWE. And the exciting part to me about the Dwayne Johnson news was they're giving him the rights back to the name The Rock, which is apparently owned by WWE, but then he is licensing it back.

to them for a certain period of time. So as complicated an esoteric a financial transaction as I could possibly imagine, but good for him. His short run as the stone didn't really work out. The stone. Yeah.

So this week I wrote a story about an upstart wrestling league that's all elite wrestling and its founder and CEO, Tony Khan. But you actually assigned it to me and sort of found the story. Yeah, so I definitely have a history with wrestling as I live to growing up in the South and in sort of the early cable bays. Yeah, wrestling was on television, on what's now TBS, and

every Saturday and Sunday night at like, or evening at 6 p.m. and watched it religiously. I used to watch it with my dad. You know, my dad even took me to wrestling shows and sort of, you know, kind of the very much like the days of sort of smoky, sort of low ceiling, um, uh,

sketchy arenas and sketchy people and strange and wonderful, whatever, especially for, you know, kid seven, eight years old. And yeah, yeah. At some point, I think probably around the time, first year of college, I was like, yeah, okay, that's enough. I'm, I've, I've grown this, but was always kept a loose, you know, sort of relationship with what was happening in, in, in that world. And then, yeah, fast forward to, you know, the last few years and when AWS,

started, you know, definitely, yes, some of my parasocial internet friends were following it, into it, you know, definitely embraced AEW, saw it as a real alternative to WWE. That struck my interest. And then, yeah, then they happened to be part of our Brands of Matter franchise in 2022. And sort of off of that, looking, you know, I remember sort of

pouring over the list looking for possible story ideas and researching Tony a bit and just seemed like, oh, wow, this guy's, you know, a character. I didn't even fully, fully appreciate that. And that definitely sort of started. And then, yeah, sort of just a serendipitous offer to meet with him last September led to me being like, yeah, I should do that. And, you know, try to turn this into a story and then was talking about it with you. And then what happened after that? So I come from a wrestling family. I was going to say I'm a wrestling. Told me this. I was going to

I'm going to say I'm a wrestling airwrestler. Definitely one of just watching it on television every weekend. It remains funny that you were into a league called NWA. Yeah. So funny. Pre-NWA, to be clear. But yes. Did not age well almost immediately. National Wrestling Association. It was the southern circuit of the then regionalized world of wrestling. So I was about to call myself a wrestling heiress, but I actually...

have received no money from this. My grandfather, so he's either my great uncle or my grandfather's cousin. Honestly, I've gotten two different answers on this, but we have memorabilia about him and he's talked about a lot in my family, was legendary wrestler Vern Gagne.

So Vern is one of the most famous wrestlers of all time. He was very famous in the 40s and 50s in the ring, and then he founded a big wrestling promotion, AWA, that ran sort of across the Midwest and was killed by the WWE in the end.

But some of the wrestlers he trained include Hulk Hogan, Jesse Ventura, the Elder Von Erich, and his son Greg was also a wrestler in the AWA. And his grandson, who I have met, is a former minor league baseball player named John Paul. Oh.

My only relationship of wrestling besides like some tertiary watching it as a kid, like WCW 1990s sort of wrestling is my first. The first story I ever got aired on NPR when I was starting out in radio was a story course story about basically like an amateur wrestler who,

His father was a wrestler growing up, became estranged from his father, and then eventually got into wrestling. And his father's best friend, but sort of like brother, his uncle trained him. And so it was this story core conversation between the father and the uncle about their relationship to this man, John's father, who then passed away just before they were going to tag team together.

in a match and it was really like do you remember what lead sad and beautiful it was the uh bronx league that's very it's a local league it's nothing it's nothing big indian yeah very indie but it was just something that was passionate so it was just really beautiful like father son story around wrestling yeah it is worth noting um my either great uncle or grandfather's cousin verne

had CTE and eventually body slammed his roommate in a wrestling home and killed him. It's basically worth noting that wrestling is just like the most dangerous form of entertainment, probably. Yes. It's not a sport. Yeah, it's not a sport. So we're standing in the office and talking about that I have this offer to meet

Tony, we go. We go. It's at the very she-she Crosby Hotel in Soho. And it was during the Innovation Festival. So it was quite a whatever for all of us. And yeah. So what happened when you told Tony who you work?

Tony was like, oh, you're related to Vern Gagne? And he was like, I was talking to a wrestler who was in AWA and he was talking about the fact that it was this Midwestern family-run business and they would all golf together on weekends and that's basically what I'm trying to do. And he just could not, I mean, he lit up and he couldn't believe it and he just sort of has this quality that I do appreciate because when I was in high school, I was voted most likely to start a story and forget to end it. And I think that

A great skill to have in journalism. That is true. I give you that. Never met a deadline. But I will also say, like, yeah, without question, the greatest award ever bestowed upon

upon me. So, and the truest. But, yeah, so he just, like, circled back to it again and again and again. He just, like, was, just could not believe that he was, you know, even a distant relative to that kind of wrestling world greatness was in his presence. I had another call with him and at the end of the call he went, is everyone in your family really stocky and bald? And I said, yes, Tony. I was like, yes, Tony. And,

And then he was like, you know, Vern used to make his wrestlers carry each other up the stairs. And I was like, oh, yeah, well, my dad has four brothers. I just recently watched the first Rocky movie and it has all this sort of like very like rudimentary like, you know, training in the meat locker or whatever. Is it like that? It was like, oh, it's like street training. Yeah. Yeah. That's correct. Before we had fitness regimens and gyms. No, Vern had a barn in Minnesota that had no heating. Someone should do that. That would be a good trending news.

you have a partner and then you just carry the partner upstairs and then the person carries you upstairs and it's a great workout. It's like $40 for like 30 minutes. I said to Tony, I was like, you know, my dad has four brothers and my grandpa used to make him do that to each other and Tony was like, that's so cool. Is it? Real question though, is it? He's like, nice. Yeah, he has a boyish quality. So who,

Who is Tony Connolly? Tell people. Tony is, I would say, most pertinently to this profile, the founder and CEO of All Elite Wrestling. He's a huge wrestling nerd. All Elite Wrestling has been around since 2019. But the other things you need to know is that he is a billionaire's son.

His father, Shad Khan, made his fortune through Flex and Gate. I honestly have tried to understand what that is several times. Auto parts adjacent. Yeah. Don't quiz me on it either, but yes. It's a legit business, but it's also like. And to his credit, yeah. Came to this country, you know, like. Dishwasher. Came to the dishwasher. Yeah, like basically ended up like taking over this business, you know, that he worked there and turned into whatever, sold it.

significant resources to purchase the Jacksonville Jaguars for several hundred million dollars. Fantastic mustache, too. I was going to say that, family. If you've ever seen his f***ing cover, and I'm sorry for bringing up a sensible rival, but it is truly... We'll bleep that out. Yeah, sure. Actually, that would be great. That would be really funny. But yeah, it is resplendent. Good.

Good hair and facial hair in that family. You got your little light bright over there pushing buttons. Amazing. I love it. I'm just like, ooh, look at the colors. Look at the colors that Josh has. ShotKhan owns the Jaguars. He also owns a Premier League team, Fulham. Tony has roles in both of those, but AEW is really his first, it's like his own thing. Yeah. He's also, I think worth saying, just like, Tony's just like a big wrestling nerd. He's kind of a

kind of adorable. He's just like, he's kind of like a kid who gets to play with all the toys. I mean, his passion and, yeah, just spending whatever hour and a half we've been with him in person. Yeah, I mean, he has a

infectious charisma about him, yes. To me, it's hard not to root for him, especially when you think about his main rival. Right, yeah. So speaking of charisma, yeah, it is also... It's a real faith-filled relationship. Hard not to talk about the eminently memeable rival, Vince McMahon. So, yeah, I mean, how did you think about working through the competition and, yeah, sort of Vince and what role does he play in your story?

To back up, Vince's influence on professional wrestling can't really be overstated. I sort of wanted to call him the Eminence Grease of wrestling, but unfortunately he spent so much money on cosmetic surgery to look young. That description doesn't feel right. He's the former CEO of WWE. He's the current executive chairman of TKO Holdings.

So his father owned a big regional wrestling promotion similar to my family's. Which was in the Northeast here. In the Northeast, yeah. And then he basically hoovered up everyone else. Yeah, like he consolidated into a national thing in the 80s, WrestleMania and stuff.

So definitely put the last of the regional, you know, either absorb them or absorb the wrestlers. Yeah. Yeah, that's true. My family lost Hulk Hogan to him, among others. Heartbreaking. Heartbreaking moment here on the podcast. Heartbreaking. Listen, I could be a wrestler right now. Absolutely. In a way, your family is responsible for Gawker going out of business. Yeah. Just a certain number of hops. If one is willing to do the work. Yeah.

To get from one point to the other. Well, I guess I'm only like three degrees away from Peter Thiel. Yeah.

We don't like that. But WWE is totally massive. I mean, today their business ventures include video games, books, TV broadcasts in some 180 countries. And their programming is viewed by about a billion people. AEW is sort of the first credible rival to emerge in the past 20 years. Yeah, I mean, Josh, you mentioned WCW. That was probably the last...

attempt. So how do you think AEW is different from WWE? It's hard to separate Vince McMahon from WWE. I mean, his son-in-law, Triple H, currently writes the storylines, but it's like, it's a super top-down run organization. Wrestlers often have very little say in terms of their characters or what their storylines will be or how they'll be treated. Tony, I think, is a little more collaborative. He also treats wrestlers a little more humanely, although in my story, I think I spoke to

Josie Reisman, who is a writer and wrote a great book about Vince McMahon, Ringmaster, about the fact that the bar is kind of on the floor in terms of how well you treat wrestlers. Like, it's hard to say, even if AEW has made an improvement, it's hard to figure out how much credit to give them. There's still room for a lot more.

Exactly. Yeah. So I think Tony just works a little more with wrestlers. I've spoken to wrestlers like Chris Jericho, who's kind of a legend in the industry who worked at WWE and at AEW. I think he works a little more with them to craft their storylines. I think he treats people a little better. I think it's basically just run in a nicer way, if that makes sense. Yeah. And do you think like that's

part of what fans are responding to or... I think that's part of it. I also think, you know, Tony is a wrestling nerd's wrestling nerd, you know, and I think he brings this, like, enormous amount of reverence and awe and respect when it comes to sort of crafting these storylines or creating programming. I think fans can see that, you know? They've also done a great job recruiting talent. I mean, I think MJF is one of AEW's biggest stars and he's kind of a homegrown talent. And I think

I saw him. I went to an AEW wrestling match, and he has an unbelievable amount of charisma in the ring. And I think fans can see that the programming is, I hate to use this word because it's almost meaningless, but it feels authentic. It feels like something made for them. I think Vince McMahon is known for some pretty insane programming decisions. I mean, I think back to the amount of wrestlers who have died in wrestling

the ring because, you know, effectively because of his decisions. I don't know if those were in the script, but yes. Josie Reisman made a point that I really liked, which is that Tony Khan could almost be seen as a natural successor to Vince McMahon in the sense that he took everything that Vince McMahon had built, took that inspiration and sort of tried to build upon it.

Vince McMahon has cut down anyone who could have taken over from him. And he's in his, I think, late 70s and still controlling everything. And so it's sort of like AEW just feels like it's sort of taken things a step further. Tony also just listens to his audience. I mean, for better or for worse, he's got Twitter fingers. Yeah, he's extremely online. As I alluded to, Vince is a meme and you see Vince memes all the time. But Tony's

in there, you know, in the arena, as it were. You want to know something kind of embarrassing? I knew who Vince McMahon was. I had read about him, but actually, I think it was only when I was reporting this story that I sat down, looked at a photo of him, and I was like, that's the meme guy. I totally didn't, like, put two and two together. Yeah. I suppose if you don't actively watch WWE, you probably, you know, wouldn't necessarily need to know. Probably for the best to not have that be in your culture.

It is an unforgettable thing. It's also changed so much over the years. Maybe that's why you didn't recognize him. It's crazy. Yeah.

So what's next? So we have this news, WWE big contract, $500 million a year, you know, for maybe a decade. You know, AEW is also looking for a new rights deal. Yeah. What do you think is going to happen? AEW is just looking for a home for its content. Tony's made a bunch of acquisitions, including things like the Ring of Honor, which was another league. So he has both live...

shows that he wants people to watch. This has been Tony's dream for a really long time. When he started doing e-wrestling age 12, he came up with the name Dynamite for his shows, and AEW Dynamite is on TV now. So...

He needs a home for Dynamite. He also needs a home for all this archival footage that he's found. He's shopping it around. What I would say is the Netflix deal with WWE is not necessarily bad for AEW. It may even show that AEW is actually worth quite a bit of money. Yeah.

or sort of increase interest in it. I mean, this gives, you know, for Netflix, I mean, I think the intent is one, it's like a lot of content. You know, Netflix has, I think, of late largely been built on messy drama reality programming and what is wrestling, but just a year-round reality show filled with messy drama. Soap opera for boys. Yeah, I mean, I think that another streamer who,

was arguably willing to pony up even whatever, $100, $200 million. I have no idea what they're going for. You know, like that would be a pretty good deal as far as that goes. And yeah, it could give Tony that opportunity to compete on a global scale, which at this point haven't been able to do, right? WWE being part of the Netflix ecosystem is great for them because they can have tons of spinoff shows, whether that's, you know,

wrestlers getting their own reality TV show, wrestlers becoming movie stars. I think AEW is looking for something similar. And actually in January, MJF, one of AEW's biggest homegrown stars, was in The Iron Claw in December. Sorry, movie came out in December. So I think they're sort of looking for a similar deal. Well, it was a lot of fun to do. I hope people go check it out. Please read. Fastcompany.com. Please read it. Please read. Please subscribe.

Please follow us on YouTube where you can now get our podcast. To the Garnier extended family, I know I'm going to get some emails fact-checking me at the end of this. And Mamare will give you a call later. We're going to take a quick break, followed by our producer Blake Odom's interview with Vori founder and CEO Joe Kudlow.

So we're back with our producer, Blake Odom. He's making his on-mic debut this episode, I believe, with an interview with Vuori founder and CEO, Joe Kudla. Hey, Blake. Hey, Yaz. Hey, Josh. How y'all doing? What were some of your favorite parts of the conversation? For me, when...

Joe was honest about sustainability in the clothing industry. The line that stood out to me the most was that the clothing industry is a dirty job or a dirty industry when it comes to sustainability. And he doesn't like the terminology used for sustainability.

He tries to see it as we try to dampen the way that we use materials and how they harm the environment. So like they'll keep researching and finding out ways to make materials.

the impact on renewable resources for clothing better each time with each material. And also make sure that the consumer doesn't notice. He tries to make it a softening blow. Well, I'm excited to hear the context of that. I know we heard the clip in the opening that clothing is a dirty business, which I think is

A fun way to put it, and I think not something everyone wants to hear. So how did you start this conversation with Joe? Set it up for us. I started by asking Joe about the company's $4 billion valuation. Its most prominent investor is SoftBank, who is most famous for funding WeWork, which is not exactly a success story.

You know, I played sports growing up and so I was always intrigued by apparel that you would use for working out and playing sports. After I graduated from college, I had an opportunity to work as a model and my friends loved to poke fun at me for that experience. But that was the first time I got a glimpse behind the curtain at the fashion industry and started getting really intrigued by how designers worked with textiles and built collections and

And I was somebody who just played sports. I'd never nurtured a creative bone in my body. I'd never taken a design class, but I was just always fascinated by design. It wasn't long after that I was introduced to yoga to heal my back. And this is the first time that I really paid a lot of attention to the market because

and started thinking about this idea for a brand. And what's really interesting is like, you know, a lot of people did perceive the activewear market to be very busy. I mean, you think about the giants of the category, you know, the Nikes and Adidas of the world. Yeah.

It's interesting because yes, they, we, we do all make product that you can work out in and move in and sweat in. But I think I just always felt like the brands, you know, were so different in that world. You had these brands that were distributed at mass market. They were really sports brands. They kind of championed this sports ideology and the product was more urban team sport inspired. It was all the spirit of the brand was about competitiveness.

And then you had Lulu that kind of came into the world and was really more of like an individual fitness brand. Like they weren't really championing this sports ideology. It was more about yoga and mindfulness and,

And that was really inspiring. But Lulu was very much focused on their female consumer. And then after they launched, there was a number of brands that entered that were kind of following in their footsteps, really going after this female consumer. As a guy who was getting into yoga, I was fascinated to know that there were 30 million people practicing yoga in the United States. You know, if you think about the brands, especially the men's brands, they didn't exist.

So we kind of looked at it as like this wide open market. It was like we wanted to be the antithesis of those big sports brands and build a product that we would actually want to wear here in our community in Southern California, which was by the beach. It was more of a casual aesthetic.

And so we designed this product ethos called Built to Move and Styled for Life. And it was all about building versatile product that was ultra comfortable that you just wanted to wear across not only working out, but multiple aspects of your life. And we just felt like that was completely missing from the men's market. And so, yes, crowded in some respects. But when you really started to go into the nuance, we felt like the market was just wide open.

Viore has been profitable since 2017, which is impressive compared to other direct-to-consumer brands in the space. Tell me how you accomplished that and how you think about staying profitable while expanding at such a rapid pace. Yeah, I think maybe...

The fact that I started my career as a CPA factored into that equation. At the time that we launched, the trend was to raise a lot of money and to go out and grow a direct-to-consumer business and really focus on the top line because companies were really being valued more on top-line revenue growth versus...

EBITDA or generating profitability. So focusing on profitability was really bucking the trend of the day when we launched. And I would say partly we did that out of necessity. I wasn't, I wouldn't say a super skillful fundraiser. I hadn't started a successful apparel brand and I had actually never worked in apparel before. I was a finance person.

with a vision and a dream for this category. And, you know, at the time, really, the trend was really that of like cutting out the middleman and going direct to consumer and leveraging some form of tech, you know, to build your business. Right. Yeah. That didn't register and make a lot of sense to me because at the end of the day, we were a clothing business and our vision for clothing was just to do something differentiated. It was it was a differentiated product that

And it was a differentiated brand and with hopefully a differentiated culture. And investors just didn't understand that. Like they were really getting behind these pure play DTC brands that wanted to kind of disrupt the value chain in the space. You know, they wanted to pass along more savings to the consumer, cut out the middleman.

And so because we weren't playing that game, rejection was a constant when it came to raising money. It was really, really hard. And so we had to find other ways to survive. And I think looking back while it was challenging and I had a bit of a complex life,

At the time, I'm so grateful that we weren't good at raising money in those early days because, you know, we had to get scrappy and we had to develop really unique relationships with our supply chain partners. And we had to find a way to develop a working capital model that could self fund the growth of our business, because I knew I wasn't going to be able to do it by raising my series A, B, C, D and E. And we took it one day at a time.

And we focused all of our energy on the simple things, you know, the old fashioned things in business, especially in consumer, making a great differentiated product, treating your customers exceptionally well, building a winning, incredible culture where great people want to come to work and thrive and building a really strong relationships with our supply chain. And ultimately, we were able to continue growing the business and develop a working capital model that could self-fund.

Viori is valued at $4 billion, and that's the kind of valuation that we see a lot of software companies achieving. How do you think about that valuation? Why do you think it's justified? If you were to just look at a comp set of public companies and some of our peers and folks that are in the public markets, and you just look at how they are valued, there's really no difference. Viori is valued, leveraging kind of the same sort of

methodologies and metrics that public market companies are valued based upon. Beyond brick and mortar, what have been your most successful marketing strategies? I know that personally, I've seen Fiori products being advertised on

comedic podcasts. I've seen it on Two Bears, One Cave, YMH, things like that. So what has, in your opinion, been Fiore's most successful marketing strategies? What's important is that you organize yourself in a way that you can be nimble. You can create a lot of content. You can test.

You can understand what's resonating, what's not. And then you can institutionalize what's working and you can move on quickly from what doesn't. And that's something that we've really brought, that methodology we've really brought to all of the channels that we advertise in. But yeah, we've had...

We've had a lot of success in social, building a community on social media and really asking ourselves, like, how do we support our community in living awesome lives? Like being healthy and being strong and, you know, exercising, living an active life.

Through that, we've given birth to a lot of platforms like the Viore Active Club, which was free workouts on our Instagram. We started that during COVID because everyone was at home and that continues today. We have Friday Fuels where we're sharing like awesome recipes on how to eat healthy. We work with a number of athletes and kind of more nationally recognized folks to tell their stories. But we also work and just continue.

share the love with our community of trainers that we're aligned with. We have what's called our V1 community, and it's a number of personal trainers and yoga and health and wellness instructors that live around the United States. And we celebrate them through our social channels and really create a community. We've advertised on a number of podcasts and

and found our customers where they're listening. It's taken a lot of testing and learning to do that. But, and you know, today we play in just about every channel we're on. We're advertising on television, doing catalog work and putting catalogs in the mail. And

I have gotten some of those Iori catalogs, by the way. So yeah, they work. You raise money from SoftBank. Other notable SoftBank investments have been WAG and WeWork, which didn't totally pan out.

What can you say about the process of working with them? And were you nervous to take on that much capital? Well, I think what's deceiving is like a lot of people perceived us as raising $400 million that would go to the company that we would use for growth.

The company was unique in the sense that we didn't need capital when we raised that money. And so that money actually went to shareholders and it was called secondary versus primary. Primary capital goes to the company for growth. Secondary capital is just providing liquidity for shareholders. So 100% of that $400 million went to shareholders. A lot of our investors were friends and family of ours that invested when the company was operating out of a garage.

The company was valued at a very little amount of money at those days. And so we had an opportunity to provide some liquidity and a return on investment for a lot of those shareholders. And that's what we accomplished with SoftBank. They've been great to work with. They've been hands-off for the most part, but helpful when we need help. As the brand has been expanding internationally and specifically in Japan,

SoftBank's been really helpful in making key introductions, helping us think through the best approach for the market and building some awareness for us. Viore has expanded its brick and mortar presence over the past couple of years. I've read that the company's hopes to compete with the likes of Lululemon. What do you think about expanding your brick and mortar presence and competing with a Nike or a Lululemon?

We very much stay focused on what we can control, and that's the Viore brand. And we hope that we will be competitive with the best-in-class brands in our category. But vertical retail for us has been such an awesome, awesome thing.

strategy. Every store that we open, we ask ourselves the same thing. It's like, how can we add value to the communities we serve? How can we build authentic relationships? How can we invite them in in an authentic way, host events together, raise funds and stand in support of local causes? And then innovating and building world-class product. Of course, that's a

We can't ever overlook the importance of product. We are very much a product first company, but focusing on those things that are within our control, I think we've got a really good chance of becoming an iconic world-class global brand. On your website, you state that Bliss Blend is made from 75% recycled materials.

How do you incorporate sustainability in your manufacturing process? The word sustainable is one that I struggle with. You know, since the early days of our brand, we've always tried to be responsible and lessen the environmental impact that we have when we operate. But the truth is the clothing business is a dirty business. And what's important to us is to try to make responsible choices where we can. We're not perfect, right?

But, you know, we have a mission to try to convert all of our materials to recycled, organic or bio based. From the early days, like a lot of our big core programs are made from recycled materials. Bliss Blend, you know, as we launch new innovations, oftentimes we will try to make sure that they're made from recycled or organic materials. I think when you look towards the future, there's some really exciting things happening there.

in the bio-based world. And so you're going to start to see a lot of these synthetic materials that are typically derived from petroleum shifting to being derived from plant sources and other more bio-based organic sources.

So it's an exciting time in our category, but we always try to prioritize, you know, those types of decisions. You know, we operate our business plastic neutral or carbon neutral, but by no means are we perfect. We've got a long ways to go. By saying that you're switching, right? Or like transitioning, because like Viore is made from like some of the products made from like seashell material, which is like a biodegradable fiber that's made from like trees and seaweed and stuff. So,

How much is using that material like key to the process of making VR clothing? When we launch a new product, our goal is to always source a fiber or a textile that's made from recycled or organic materials. That's always our goal. We can't always achieve that goal, but we always try to do our best. Sometimes we'll launch with a conventional polyester or a conventional nylon and

But then we have a goal to work through our innovation team to convert that fiber into

and to convert it to a more, quote unquote, like less impactful fiber or textile. Every textile we work with, we grade as like harmful or less harmful. And we calculate the carbon footprint of these textiles. And so on this kind of journey, we're always looking to improve. And every year we set goals to try to improve. So

What I was talking about with respect to evolution of products is like, if there was something that's made from a conventional kind of petroleum based product, we will have goals in place to try to evolve it while also kind of matching the quality, the comfort and the hand feel of that original textile.

Okay, we are back with David, and it's time to wrap up the show with Keeping Tabs. This is where each one of us shares a story, trend, or something from pop culture that we're following right now. And David, since you're our guest, what are you keeping tabs on? Oh, well, thank you, guys. I've been waiting for this moment for, I don't know, months. So many choices. I...

Yeah, I've been playing long at home, as I'm sure everyone has. Yeah, DM us your keeping tabs, people. Oh, please. That would actually be great. Yeah, I would love that. I did like a personal Final Four-style bracket to sort of win this down. So I want to thank SoftBank for playing Super Bowl ad season and my year of hate, which was previewed on this very podcast. As you may have heard on our New Year's resolutions...

I'm David Lutzky, deputy editor at Fast Company. My New Year's resolution is to consume only media that I hate and see how it changes me as a person. Inspired by Shonda Rhimes.

Yeah. Oh, it is happening. So I am keeping tabs on two amazing conspiracies. So one is NFL related, and that are the people who think that the National Football League is scripting the season and, you know, sort of architecting sort of who will be in the Super Bowl, win the Super Bowl for maximum, you know, ratings effect. So funny. And yeah, so they think, of course, that the Chiefs have, you know, proceeded, you know, as far as they have because of...

Taylor Swift and having her at the games and so the networks can show her in the luxury box 7,000 times. Then there are the people who are now parsing the color choices for the Super Bowl logo, looking at past Super Bowl logo color choices and seeing in them the indicator of the already determined outcome. Just great, great stuff. Who do they think is

pulling the strings at the end of this. Roger Goodell, of course. I mean, yeah, right? I mean, it has to be. Roger Goodell is the oncoming storm. Just amazing and...

A conspiracy of this scale would be truly the most significant scandal in American history. And the thousands and thousands of people that would have had to be looped into this and then sign off on it and then never leak it. It just, again, just real moon landing film and TV scandals.

studio level Joe Rogan, you know, our three level stuff. Amazing. Our three levels. Yeah, no, it's true there. I mean, honestly, like it's gotten to the point where like the NFL started like making commercials, like mocking the idea of it, which if it is actually true,

Yeah, that's just a throw off the scent, of course. I mean, you know, what would you expect them to do but to lean into in a way to confuse you? Yeah. So yeah. So then the second one, of course, is this is a result of the Year of Hate project and my time in the right wing fever swamps that I've been wading into. And this is the conspiracy emerging that basically President Biden is only going through the motions of seeking re-election from

president, and he's just basically looking for that perfect on-ramp to have a pretext to step away so that Michelle Obama will then step in heroically and be the standard bear and just hits every single note for right-wing bogeywoman, I guess in this case, scaremongering. This, again, will never happen.

happen. But it's very exciting to watch these folks. Again, shout out to Patrick Bette-David, who I'm new. Really? Spending a lot of time listening to Patrick Bette-David, who I had never heard of six months ago. No, I do. Megan Kelly. A lot of Megan Kelly. Oh, God.

And anyway, but yeah, so it's very exciting to watch folks meltdown and pondering all the particulars for how this is going to play out. And I really can't wait for it not to happen. And then for all of these people to either just memory hole it, pretend that they never explored this theory or to then have to much better would be for them to then have to post facto rationalize why this didn't happen, which would really be the outcome I'm looking for. But yeah, so those, you know, I know y'all like, you know, drama and conspiracy or whatever. So I wanted to come with.

And actually, on the Daily Mail today, there is a headline, Travis Kelsey admits his Wes Anderson-style pregame fit was his audition to star in the famous director's movie. He's a paid actor. He's a paid actor. He's a paid actor. Yeah, it's just industry plans all the way down. I'm going to say, yeah, he's a paid actor insofar as he was on SNL. Yeah, and he aspires to be a paid actor.

Yes, in that sense, without question. He's more charismatic than Gronk, that's for sure, in terms of talking about it. I love Gronk. His brother looks like he's got a promising media career in the near future. Their podcast is very good. I know it doesn't fit into your year of hate, but it's very good. I have to admit I haven't consumed the Kelsey's podcast, but yes. Josh. Okay, let's move on. What are you keeping tabs on? Oh, man, I had such a hard time coming up with one that I thought was going to match David's output here, which clearly we went through. But I think I got to do...

the sort of regular thing that I'm sure is exploding on Twitter right now. We're recording this a little bit earlier than when we usually do for those. But so as of today, when we're recording this, a week ago for you all listening to this, Jon Stewart's coming back to The Daily Show, which is...

I think not permanently, just Mondays and through the election season. And it's probably a good win for The Daily Show, which was having the hardest time finding

Yeah.

But we weren't putting forward our best. That's a hot take. Wow. That's a hot take. Although to put a button on this whole thing, I mean, yeah, Lorne Michaels is either the same age or a year older than McMahon. Yeah. I mean, it's a similar case of like just this impresario who will just not let go and...

you know, it just sort of looms large over the thing that they created in a way that maybe is not ultimately healthy. And just, you know, the notion, I mean, again, I mean, obviously he's not like writing the sketches or whatever, but just, it's just another sign of the boomer gerontocracy that sort of controls, you know, sort of so many levers of power in our society. I know now this is taking a real turn. I love this tangent, but we need to get out of here. We do need to get out of here. Ron DeSantis is no longer a presidential candidate. Pour one out.

Bore for our awkward homie. But there was one really funny article on NBC about this, which is that in the week before the Iowa caucuses, Scott Wagner, the head of his super PAC, decided to solve a thousand piece puzzle and spent that entire week doing it in front of his staff, which is so awesome.

That's excellent. Let's get out of here. Let's get out of here. That's it for Most Innovative Companies. David, thank you for joining us. Thank you. Our show is produced by Avery Miles, Blake Odom, and Julia Xu. Mix and sound design by Nicholas Torres. And our executive producer is Josh Christensen. Remember again to subscribe, rate, and review. And we'll see you next week.