Brian Smith

And then I would have to backtrack and get the Ugg boot business started up again.

Yeah.

No.

No, I thought I was doing a brilliant job, you know, and I'm telling you about one of the biggest mistakes I ever made, right, which was hiring these two models, really good looking.

We posed them on the beach and I'd run those things and the sales at that, you know, let's say 81, 82 was about 30,000.

The sales went to 35,000.

It was like...

my ads were doing nothing and then again summer job and then come back to it and and i used good looking models again sales went to i think it was 45 000 that year and it was like just getting nowhere and it was probably the fourth season of me being in business

I really wanted to give up.

I was working on a golf course in the summertime, right?

Doing what?

I was a greenskeeper.

I was changing the holes on all the greens and I was helping with construction and all that.

I actually loved that golf.

That golf course job is probably the best job I've ever had in my life outside of ARC, you know?

Yeah.

But over the summer, I realized, you know, my product's so expensive, it needs a huge inventory because you never know if someone's going to walk in the door, they're a size 7 or a size 13.

So it was a very hard product for a retailer to stock because of the cost.

Americans still didn't understand sheepskin.

They thought it was hot and sweaty and prickly.