Brian Smith

And now he insisted I went on the road.

And I can remember walking into Con Surfboards, which was in Santa Monica, right near where I lived.

And I was so embarrassed to open up this bag of samples.

I pulled them out and he goes, oh my God, Ugg boots.

He says, they're great.

All my friends have got them.

What are you doing with those?

And I said, well, you know, we're thinking of importing them into America.

Oh my God, you're going to make a fortune.

And so this happened in all the surf shops that I went into and the same with Doug.

And we thought we were going to be instant millionaires, no doubt about it.

Yeah.

That's correct.

We were going to be partners.

And the interesting thing about that road trip we both did, neither of us realized that we hadn't asked for an order.

Now we knew we needed inventory.

And by a pure fluke, my roommate in Santa Monica overheard us talking and said, oh, there's some guys at my office looking for other new investments.

And let me take it to them.

And he did.

And we were able to raise $20,000 from them as capital.