What Makes A Brand ...

Good morning…

I am fascinated by great brands. Here is a basic definition…

We all have brands that we lean towards when given a choice.

Apple is probably the brand I see and use the most. Ever since the Apple Store and the iPod , I have been attached to the brand. Apple is one of those rare brands that if you just matched what you spent on products investing in the stock over the last 20 years, you could retire.

I am very picky and loyal when it comes to the brands I use. I am also a sucker for a great founder story so the brands I use the most have products whose founder I have met or invested in (I never met Steve Jobs, but did attend many keynotes at Mosconi center in the early 200’s and have held the stock for over 20 years)

One of my favorite brand pass along stories is Ressence watches. I was in San Francisco at a Robinhood meeting back in 2017 ish with Micky Malka who was also a Robinhood investor. After the meeting I asked Micky about the watch that he was wearing. I had been staring at it on and off for a couple of hours.

Mickey looked at me and said ‘you can’t afford it’!

I was not sure if Micky was joking or just being polite and deflecting me from an expensive Rabbit hole. Later that day I searched for the company and watch and when I saw the price, I pinged Micky and said he was right…I could not afford it!

After Robinhood went public four years later, I did treat myself to the watch. One of the first things I did was take a picture of the watch on my wrist and send it to Micky in the old email thread. Micky got right back to me with a laugh and congratulations.

I have since added a few more Ressense watches to my collection. One of my favorites is below…

I would say 80 percent of the time when I am sitting with someone, I will get asked about the watch and immediately tell the person ‘you can’t afford it’! I than tell the Micky Malka story and we all laugh.

My version of the story has led to at least 100 sales for the company. I have since met the founder, Benoit Mintiens, who lives in Belgium, who I have told the story about how his watches get marketed in my circle. If everything falls apart for me, I could at least go run sales at Ressence.

Another brand I am immersed in is Ari, a mens fashion brand with a longtime flagship store in SOHO on West Broadway. Over the years I have become good friends with Moshe, the founder and designer. I love to talk about the business with him, from design, to manufacturing to retail and ecommerce. Today, two of his daughters now work in the business. It is fun to see how his ideas have evolved over the last 20 years.

Last week my son Max and I met and had dinner with the founder of SWAG Golf. He has an incredible founder story that is worth listening too. I have been a small investor for a few years, but never got around to meeting Nick and had only read stories from the website. I had invested on the recommendation of my friend Jack Newhouse who knew him well and I loved the products.

Over that last 40 years I have had the good fortune of seed investing into a lot of great founders and products and companies. Great brands come in all shapes and sizes of companies.

When I made my first seed investment in The Gripp back in 1994 (a product still popular today), the internet did not exist.

In fact, in 1996 when it first dawned on me that we needed to own the domain name for ‘The Gripp’, it turned out a company selling a ‘penis extension’ product had beat us to it (no pun intended).

The founder, Mark Scatterday, was/is a brilliant product guy and has gone on to found and work at some other incredible product and brands.

As for some other brands I am loyal too today?

In cycling gear it is one of our portfolio companies DSTNC.com and two cycling gearbrands they carry - Giordana and Q36.5.

I have recently become a huge fan of Garrett Leight sunglasses. I stumbled across a pair in Tel Aviv many years ago and a few years back stumbled into their SOHO store. The founder Garrett is the son of Oliver Peoples, which makes for a great story on top of an already great product.

The last few years I have been wearing Veja shoes which seem to go well with almost anything I wear because I mostly dress very casually.

Two other great brands we seed invested in are Manscaped and Robinhood. They are both so different of course. Manscaped resonated with customers day one. Paul Trans the Manscaped founder understood the market and the customer mindset perfectly. I met Paul and was hooked. I think the product is great and of course matters, but the name, packaging and domain continue to carry a lot of weight in a crowded consumer. category.

Robinhood was the right product with the right design, the right strategy at the right time. It helped that customer acquisition on the web in 2014 and 2015 was the easiest in history. Trading and Robinhood was also counter to what was popular at the time - index investing. Few believed the world needed another broker. I would have invested in Vlad and Baiju and the product no matter what the name was. The product was so loved and grew so fast for so many years that the company - I believe - confused growth and success for brand. During the 2021 Gamestock crisis, I probably learned that most valuable lesson as I watched the brand and company and founders get pummelled by the users they thought loved the brand so much. They survived of course, but the brand will always be associated with Gamestock and the whole COVID, ZIRP, Reddit era.

Have a great Sunday.