FUBU Founder & CEO Daymond John Talks Entrepreneurship & Brand Building
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Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. We want to bring you back to Southampton here. We are at Michael Loeb's house, a chartered community summit. It's all about entrepreneurship, creating a brand, and we've got a great voice who knows a little bit about that and more. Damon John, he's the founder and CEO of FUBU and, of course, a star of ABC's Shark Tank. So good to be able to have some time with you. How are you? Thanks for having me. Well, thank you. Thank you. Creating a brand, it isn't so easy. It is not easy.

Is it getting any easier or is it harder? I feel like it's an environment where anybody can almost have a brand. I do think it's getting harder. I think because you have to find this niche audience, but not only do you have to create the brand itself for your product or services, but you as a CEO and a founder have to be a brand as well. What does that mean?

Well, that means that people would not only want to know why they're investing in the brand or the product or buying it. What story does that brand or product have? As well as founders, who are you? You know, I always say on Shark Tank that, you know, none of us are original. I mean, there's a million real estate agents. There's only one Barbara Corcoran. A lot of people own sports teams, Mark Cuban, clothing line. You know how many people...

We had created personal brands and then our brands now walk into the room before we do when we want to raise capital, when we want to make decisions, when we want to defend the fact that somebody is saying negative about our brand and our company and affecting our payroll and our amazing staff that works for us. Do you think you could create FUBU today?

Absolutely. 100%. It's a completely different environment. Today's FUBU would be different, right? It's not new to have four young African-American men designing for their own market. So what would FUBU be today? I would probably do more of the Avon type of thing where I would have one male, one female in a college and a high school. They would get probably about $1,000 worth of FUBU on credit for about $300, probably underwritten by hopefully somebody great.

And the more they sell, they would get more digital curriculums and various other things. And very much of an A-bond model. So I would have, hopefully, 2 million sales reps around the world. It's so interesting that you say that because the retail environment has completely changed. It's done. It's done. Yeah. Completely done. You know, I've been to 56 trade shows this year. You know, I speak at a lot of shows and...

The traffic besides the franchise show and maybe the medical tech show, it is one-third of the traffic at these shows because these retailers are now dying. They're not walking in the door. You know who's walking in? It's a bunch of kids or people, influencers, could be grand influencers, who are now doing live selling, whether on Amazon or TikTok or whatnot, and that's what's happening.

Live selling, that's something that I think is very familiar to people in China, but not necessarily familiar to many people in the U.S., at least yet. Explain exactly what that is. Well, live selling is you go on, I'll give you an example. There's an app called Whatnot, right? And people have 20-second auctions for one little device or let's say a piece of makeup.

right, sell for about $12, right? Now, they can do this three separate times in one minute, right? So they make a profit of about $4 every time they sell. So now all of a sudden, $12 a minute. You times that, because now they have friends coming on everything, you times that by 16 hours a day.

And that's what's happening because then when people buy it, now you know who the client is and the customer. You can sell it to them again. Remember, there's only three ways to ever deal with a customer. Acquire a new one, upsell a current one, or make one buy more frequently. That's why you want to supersize everybody's fries. And now you know who they are, they can upsell them or buy more frequently. So what does it mean for all the retailers that still have, you know,

big retail locations. I'm thinking about Nike. Nike reported earnings. Now they're up today but they've been kind of working their way around some different problems. I mean what does it mean for a brand like Nike? Well Nike's been doing some great stuff in the past so you know they'll make one shoe for one person, customize it right? Well they're doing 30 billion dollars a year whatever the number is. You say why would you make one shoe? Well they're looking at this algorithm of all the people around the world who like these certain colors, patterns and styles. The customer's designing the line for them for the next year.

But if you look at retail shops, Walmart, Target, various other things, Walmart just put in podcast rooms. Why do you want to put podcast rooms in there? Well, now you have a bunch of influencers coming and doing podcasts. I bet you in two minutes...

they're going to start being able to live sell the products in Walmart. You want to always make sure the consumer has something in your retailer that they can't do at home. You know, if you're a retailer, put a runway in there where people can buy the clothes, what they buy, they link to their social media, and you can buy it as an affiliate on what's on their body as they walk down the runway. You have to have reasons why people are

coming in. And I'll tell you the hottest topic today, longevity biohacking. If you are a retailer, you're handling how people can control their lives a little bit better and not deal with just big pharma, you're into gold. This last question is for Carol because I know she is... That's like wild, but go ahead. To Shark Tank, the investments that you've made over the years, what is the gain on the investments or the loss on the investments and how much have you invested?

I think I've invested about $14 million. I just finished shooting two days ago, sitting next to Kevin. Oh, my God. Anyway, so you can't say gain or loss because a lot of times it's way more time put in on these individuals.

I got to tell you, I'm up overall because I have the number one product in Shark Tank history ever. It's called Bomba Socks. You ever interview any of my other underachievers I call fellow sharks, remind them. Let me see some Bomba Socks. And more important than the $2.2 billion that they'll hit in total sales this year is they've given away almost over 200 million units of clothing to those in need in the homeless community.

And it feels really good. So overall, I'm up. But you're going to lose. Listen, in venture, you're going to lose 9 out of 10. I'm losing 7 out of 10 because that's just an investment. We signed up for it. Get a Miss Mark Cuban? I absolutely Miss Mark Cuban. The other day I broke down when it was his last episode. When I thought about it, I was on the stage publicly speaking. I broke down in tears. And then I said to myself...

This man's well and alive in Dallas and just made another $3.5 billion. And now I've got to buy more crap on Shark Tank. What am I crying about? Always fun when we get some time with you. Be well. Thank you so much. Of course, Damon John, he is the founder and CEO of FUBU, a shark on ABC's Shark Tank, and so much more.

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