Brian Smith

Because they'd seen what had happened to Snapple.

And Snapple had gone into the millions to the hundreds of millions, and they were wanting to jump on board.

So effectively, our switchboard shut down for the entire season.

We had to create new phone numbers, and we sent them out the phone numbers to our best retailers and said, you're going to have to fax the orders in.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I'll give you a good example of that.

One of my best surf shops is a pretty hardcore surf shop in Hermosa Beach in L.A.,

Said this grandmother drove into the shop because they had Uggs on the big banner outside.

And she ordered eight pairs for all her grandchildren.

And she said she'd never heard of the brand before, but Rush Limbaugh said she had to do it.

Right?

Yeah.

So we substituted really good fashionistas who loved the product for these people who'd never even heard of it.

I mean, it just was a huge... No, it just moved us sideways, yeah.

I could see it coming so clearly.

In fact, the preseason orders for the January, February, March period looked like the company was going to be destined for $18 million, maybe even $20 million.

And most people would be so excited about that.

I knew I would not be able to finance an extra $6, $5, $6, $7 million in product, yeah.

Not really because the UGG brand was so powerful that anything else was called a fake UGG.