welcome to Fort Knox I'm John Fort here with Tim Bole CEO of Columbia sportsware which is uh this is a conversation that I'm excited about for many reasons not only because the uniqueness of Columbia sportsware the fact that you've been there for um more than 50 years it's a family business and grown it into something that is a household brand but also so much of what's going on right now in the world around Supply chains um uh manufacturing and just the consumer is very much in Colombia in your wheelhouse so Tim thanks for joining me for the conversation I always like to start with the question what is today's toughest problem that you are tackling so how about it well that's a good question you know today uh the US consumers is a little laxidasical at this point the the business for us around the world has been quite robust um but we got to get the US consumer back on track and you we see this happening frequently when we have um a big election cycle people get distracted with stuff that's not um well it's important but it's not that important if you if you consider yourself to be an outdoors person you know maybe it's not that important but um people get distracted and then um we we have a a bit of a la laxidasical consumer um but you know I think in general the company's been really well organized we have a lot of strengths we got great Brands and we have an incredible Fortress balance sheet that allows us to to to run the business without doing knee-jerk activities that might be required if we were more thinly capitalized you got a distracted consumer but at the same time coming out of the pandemic we've had a consumer that's wanted to get back outside right so it's a lot a lot more both domestic and international travel and I imagine you've seen some of that and people getting their gear to get back out there or I guess even during the pandemic people could only people could only get together outside so you saw it then too yeah that's right we had a real real burst in uh in the during the pandemic of course we had the other issue with very with the significant La lack of inventory because of the supply chain topics that that you referenced earlier but um yeah I mean it's it's a great time to be an outdoor company so um when you when you talk about a lack ofical consumer for a while we were talking about a bifurcation between the um kind of working class entry-level consumer and then the more well-healed consumer contined to spend quite a bit and I imagine depending on the brand you see all of it but how do you see that playing out across your different brands well we consider the Big Brand for the company is Colombia and that's we consider ourselves to be a very Democratic brand so we have products that are great for people who are just ENT rering the outdoors and then we have products that are really meant for people that are doing much more strenuous activities and much more sophisticated technically uh that are that are good for people doing all sorts of activities and then of course we've got Brands like Mountain Hardware which are top-of-the mountain alpinist brands for people really doing heavy uh mountaineering Etc so um we have a quite broad selection of products and um you know we we think we've got the the consumer base covered in a good way so how do you see the difference in demand playing out across those entrylevel products and than those uh kind of higher end specialized products well it's a little bit of both so the the Columbia Brand's really sweet spot is sort of the high middle um we we get um lots of accolades from our retail customers for being the best at better and so that's where we we position the CL brand we've got opportunity at the higher end as well with Colombia but the focus for Columbia and the the place where we've really done well is at that better area and we we do with our volumes have real high quality products at the opening price point as well so we've got a quite broad spectrum uh Mountain Hardware is almost exclusively at the high end and um so the the outdoor sections of the of the company are really focused on on those two areas what is the role now as you would Define it of the third party retailer for a while 10 years ago the idea was oh direct a consumer every brand just needs this direct relationship your margins will be better and these independent DTC brands in every imaginable category were springing up but now there seems to be a bit of a swing back in part because of the need for connection and expertise and a place to come and try things out uh in part maybe just because the idea of DDC for everything was over done how do you see it playing out yeah you know um I'm a I'm a real proponent and we've said many times we're really a wholesale company we do have a direct to Consumer business but honestly that's a hard business to operate and uh we do a great job of it but it's it's difficult to operate a direct to Consumer business as you know the old saw about retail is details it's it's hard especially if you're a manufacturing company that's hit that's grounded in a whole whale business to build that whole new muscle of retail business is hard and you know we can't be everywhere and and I never really understood the the concept of only DTC uh frankly I mean it's it's a great way for us to present our products uh we don't have anybody between us and the consumer when we talk about how we want our products to look what what we want to emphasize as it relates to features and benefits but it's hard to operate those things especially in brick and mortar areas um at a high level without you know without the additional cost that go along with it so what is the role of of data and the new ways of connecting with a consumer in an internet driven economy now you can know more about the various activities that a consumer does you can keep in touch with them with more than just a a mail-in warranty form you can uh I guess even go across the influence who are doing very specific activities that relate to some of your higher-end more specialized uh Brands and offerings H if not just selling directly to a consumer which is initially how a lot of people thought about e-commerce what are some of the benefits in building brand loyalty and building that connection and even knowing how to design future products that you're finding well what we and you're absolutely right what what how we look at how I look at this particularly is the science of getting your brand story out is so much more refined now so we can really talk to people who want to go offshore fishing people who want to fish in in uh streams mountains we can talk to people who just want to go to a soccer game and wear a raincoat so we can tailor the messages to those individual consumers and and be really compelling with compelling stories that will resonate with them and and that I think is the real difference between today's uh view of the science of communication and and let's say 25 years ago when all you had to do is buy a magazine ad in a specific publication and and hope that skiers red ski magazine and the hunter red uh you know Field and Stream uh but you can really talk to Consumers and and have a a real full uh discussion with them about the product so as an example for us for the columb a brand we've really focused on uh science and technology and Innovation as being differentiators and it's not as easy as showing a highly attractive model and a greatl looking jacket this is about describing how a garment functions why a particular piece of insulation might be better than another and it's you really have to have a consumer's attention for a period of time in order to be able to get this message across and that's really done by finding out what people want to use the garments for and really and spending some time with them on on the specifics as I described so talk a little bit about uh the marketing and the consumer connection now talk to me a bit about the supply chain as well you mentioned uh how that got turned on its on its head or or maybe in a worst part of the anatomy during covid but also there was a New York Times article back in October talking about how you're diversifying the supply chain not moving out of Asia but moving into places other than China uh re exploring some places in South America Central America talk to me about the degree to which you're leaning into that and as you put forth that technology and Innovation message how easy or difficult is that in areas where manufacturing might not be as advanced as where you're trying to diversify out of right right well um let me talk a little bit about the technology of the of the garas that we make um because that's a key differentiator as I said for ye for many years when we first um got to be a bigger business we focused heavily on gortex and that was a real key for the company in terms of being an advanced technological based company but as gortex became popular it was impossible to separate our gortex jacket from every other gortex jacket that makers were were manufacturing so we really decided you know if we're going to be if we're going to be a bigger company we have to be able to differentiate and so we invested heavily in technologies that make our garments better and that's been an area where we really can separate ourselves from others we've got dozens of of patents that um are really um Good and help us develop the products and and help us differentiate our products and I I can go odd nauseum on on those things but um the the key for having high quality products at prices that are affordable are the ability to to navigate uh not only the logistics and the the global manufacturing area but you have to be able to navigate the imposed tariffs that each government in the in the world world has uh imposed on garments specifically textiles and Footwear so if I give the example of the US which is where about 60% of our products end up um there there's a series of textile U tariffs that are applied um based on a number of different uh characteristics of the Garment and where the Garment is manufactured so as an example in order to to to keep um individuals from migrating into the United States from Central and South America the US has granted duty-free um textile um importations in from those markets from from specific markets and that can mean that the garments that we import from Central or South America or uh Jordan for that matter come in dutyfree that can be a 37 a half to 40% price advantage on the on the garments coming in it allows us to be very competitive um in the United States and it allows uh employ the employment of people who would otherwise maybe come to the US for work now that's great for the US consumer but frankly in Europe th those garments then become more expensive than garments which would be sourced in Bangladesh where there's a duty-free um component to the garments going into the to um to Europe from Bangladesh and and that's just as an example of how each of these countries applies duties and tariffs to Preferred trading partners and and penalizes non-preferred trading partners so we have to be very good at finding sources that can produce high quality products that have duty um and and tariff arrangements with these countries so it's a it's a logistical um it's a complex logistical U exercise yes so but we're we're very good at it honestly well you've been doing it for a while which uh which I imagine helps um and I want to get into some of that now now that we've talked about Colombia some of your Brands and uh how how broad uh your purview is uh so I want to talk not just about the company but about you um your family and and how you first got involved in the company but before we get to the company tell me first where were you born tell me about household parents any siblings absolutely so yeah I was born in Tucson Arizona my parents were students at the University of Arizona where they met uh right after World War II and I I sort of kid around that I've been at Columbia since 19 49 was a family business was founded by my mother's parents uh so my mom uh grew up in alburg Germany but Germany was not a great place in the 30s if you were Jewish so her her family came to the US and my my grandfather's elder brother uh who was a problem got basically Black Sheep exported to the to America and he uh he was a wild man up until his death but he was he was and he was the the reason my my grandparents ended up in Portland my grandfather had a a shirt factory in in U in alburg Germany and that was basically gone with the the whole um Nazi thing going on there and so he moved his family to Portland he bought a little hat and cap company uh which he operated um and my dad joined after my f BS were married and um you know the company was a a small family business everybody chipped in my grandmother worked in the warehouse my grandfather would go on the road selling my dad was involved um and when I was a senior uh in college at the University of Oregon my dad died suddenly in December and so I came home to help run the business in 1970 when the business when my dad was the last year my dad was alive the business did a million dollars and then when I came home from school uh the company was doing a half a million dollars so the kid didn't didn't do very good so my Mom myself and my grandmother scrambled around and we actually ended up by the middle 70s lost all the equity in the business um I had two younger sisters tell me about that you say lost all the equity in the business is that because you had to go get loans to keep the the thing running and and um that's how that happened well my dad six weeks before my dad died he took out an SBA loan and so we had some money uh but by the middle 70s we had you know we didn't have any idea what we were doing uh by the middle 70s we lost all the equity in the business we had a negative net worth of about $300,000 and the bank called the note and said you you guys are you're going bankrupt you don't know what you're doing you have to sell the business so we tried for about six months to sell the business no buyers um the bank said listen we'll we'll give you guys a few more months to turn this thing around but what you really need is a board of advisors to come in on a pro bono basis and help you to learn how to do business because you have no idea what you're doing he said we just loan some money to some guys outside of Portland starting a shoe company maybe one of these people would be interested in coming on board and so he went to Mr knight uh who was the founder of the shoe company and said is there anybody here that would be help willing to help these people that don't know what they're doing we had a gentleman whose name was Ron Nelson uh come on a pro bono board to help us understand how to do business you know we were concentrating on all the wrong things and Ron was very good at helping us understand how to do the right things and and frankly we were able to save the business and we basically rep replicated the Nike model which is Market manufacturer uh market and merchandise and design product in a central location globally and make those products in the world where they belong where they should be made and then distribute those products globally so let me let me go back there because that's that's huge what was it that the company was doing it was it already called Colombia but what was it that the company was doing were you trying to manufacture domestically as well as do the design and stuff and were your costs just too high what was it about what what R from Nike brought in that clicked and that you picked up on that really helped initially well first and foremost it was about the focus so we had a f the the the last year that we had a big catalog of merchandise it was 56 pages with 12 or 15 items per page so it was a very diverse collection products with no Focus so Ron said you got to concentrate on the things that you're going to be good at so we paired it down to 12 pages with about I think we had about maybe 15 items with some point of differentiation to them and we were making those items domestically and it was just at the very beginning of the importation of apparel products uh but if you were trying to import products from Asia the only way to Finance something like that was to go to a traditional bank and get a letter of credit and then issue that letter of credit to the factory and um and then the factory would ship and and the letter of credit would pay the invoice well a bank was not going to issue a letter of credit if you had no Capital which is what we had zero um we and so um Ron introduced us to a company called nisho ewire which was at the time the 12th largest corporation in the world they've since gone bankrupt but they were a traditional Japanese trading company and they were in the business of trading wheat tires Lumber back and forth between the United States and the rest of the world and Japan and they were financing Nike um and issuing the letters of credit for Nike for a fee and we got introduced and we were allowed to have a a line of credit where we could import products from Asia and uh so that really gave us the ability to to provide the capital to grow the business and so um you know that's that was a huge thing for for Nike and and frankly for us as well and a lot a way in a way this is the story this is a case study of the story in modern globalization right we're talking about the 70s into the 80s what Japan was able to do was partly rooted in that culture of hey here's this little island off the coast that has some big ideas about trade and uh and you know and domination but um controversial ideas for sure but but in Japan there was that mindset right and it really said a lot about what happened in the 70s but certainly into the 80s and 90s and how these uh Global Cor corporations of the modern era got built yeah it's um it's almost going back to feudal Japan you know the the samurai had these families which were the trading uh which the anointed traders in Japan not everyone was allowed to have the kind of trading outside of Japan that the samurai families had including nishua and Mitsubishi and others and so you were sort of brought into into the into the family right into the into the castle or however you want to put it depending what what feudal culture you're talking about um by Nike um what then was was the next step and how was your uh participation and Leadership trajectory LED Along by this well you know it's one thing to have the ability to finance products but if the products are not popular and people don't want to buy them it doesn't do any good so we've always been focused on the products and so in the very early days we had developed this garment called an interchange jacket and that was a jacket that had a liner that came out of the the jacket so you could wear the liner by itself or you could wear the Shell by itself and it became incredibly popular and we had basically an unlimited Capital base to allow us to import as much as we wanted and so we we built a business based on this interchange jacket theor of course obviously we've we've added other products over time uh and and Footwear as well which is about 20% of our total business now U but that was because we we had a great product idea and we also had frankly terrific marketing uh which was based on my mother you may have seen some of the advertisements uh testing our company's products having my mom put me through a car wash throwing me off a cliff uh leaving me on the top of a mountain with a helicopter I mean it was just lots and lots of really interesting and humorous ways to test product and to just and to demonstrate the tough ruggedness of our products and uh and that that really ended up growing the business very significantly and and uh it's something that we rely on today as well so fair to say The Interchange jacket was your Air Jordan right basically absolutely yep how did The Interchange jacket itself come about well um again I'm a big product I'm a big believer in product and unusual differentiated product and we we had a customer in Grand Junction Tennessee that sold hunting apparel called duns equipment and I would travel to Grand Junction and work with this customer and we would talk about designs and they had some really Innovative interesting people and the one of the buyers there said hey you know if you if you had the liner you could take the liner out that way you could use it when you went hunting in Minnesota but you could also use it when you went hunting in Kentucky because you wouldn't have to all have the instulation and so that really was the impetus for interchange um we got a very successful product called the quad Parker um and that that really led the company but you know not everybody wanted to buy a camouflage jacket so we applied this theorem to ski jackets which were obviously much more popular and uh and the first real hit that the company had was a company was a jacket called the Bugaboo which was a had a fleece liner in it and you could zipped that out and young people especially went crazy over this thing so it was um it was a real Real Testament to how product can make the company can can build the company so tell me if I got this right this sounds like another classic business case so you go out to the woods of Tennessee and you're talking to some Hunters who say wouldn't it be nice if right they got this idea but don't necessarily understand how it could be applied Beyond hunting but hey here you are from from out west and you're thinking about okay well here's what our customer bases and here's what 12 and I could apply this to all these different things and these people will probably never go to the woods of Tennessee in their lives but they're going to benefit from this idea do I have that right yep you got it it's exactly right so what does that mean and what's to take away from the experience of actually going and physically being with customers right because back then we didn't have the internet and you couldn't do a zoom call but that seems like the kind of thing that you don't necessarily get into on a transactional zoom call versus if you're actually in Tennessee with the Hunter and they're talking about you know it's it's kind of a an after the meeting observation perhaps yeah you know it's this is about relationships and um I'm a big proponent of uh having people together in the same space whether it's a customer dealing with a a vendor or whether it's inside our company where we have creative people that have to work with tactile product we we talk a lot about you know we're not a software company it's not like we can write code this is about things that people hold in their hand they wear it has to feel good it has to make them look good and you just can't get that stuff digitally I mean you can you can have um you can have a quicker prototype because you can exchange information with with a factory or a Design Center somewhere uh but the whole idea of what it's like to put something on and wear it and feel comfortable is is not possible uh digitally and also I think that that says a lot about relationships that you build over time those things are are not a switch that you can turn on and off you have to you have to be with people and you have to enjoy doing the same sorts of things uh with with your actually your friends you know I mean they're they're customers but at the same time they're friends tell me how this applies over time and especially in these early days to what you said before about being a wholesale company um back at the time there weren't Pro as many specialty retailers there were department stores there were some but how did your relationship with the people who were actually interacting with the customers across all these regions how did that develop how did the emergence of the Reis and those sorts of retailers influence what you do well it's interesting to mention REI because they were established the same year as Colombia 1938 and they were a small small and they've they're still operate in many ways like a specialty store that that they started as um they they're a home for the most technical products made and they're great customers of ours we have great relationships with them um but those relationships are not um are not built overnight they're not built on a digital basis you have to go there and be present as an example I was in Europe two weeks ago with our big customers in Europe and there's no um there's no substitute you know language issues being existing but there's no substitute for going and meeting with people uh having a meal talking about common problems or sometimes common issues about um you know your family matters one of one of my customers that we had a dinner with in France his daughter is a is a rower and so we talked about this famous book that's been written by about the University of Washington crew team um called boys in the boat and he was describing that his daughter had seen the movie but was unimpressed I said you got to read the book it's this is about explaining how this happened so I sent them the book and you know these are the these are the ways you build relationships and and frankly long-term business uh successes by having people trust you if you're going to say you're going to do something you're going to provide a service or a product you have to have these relationships otherwise this it just doesn't work now let me jump back and and ask about your mom tell me about her marketing Talent it sounds like Visual and storytelling Talent where did that come from yeah you know um you know there's there's this uh common notion that um people from Germany don't have a good sense of humor but my mom had a great sense of humor and she uh enjoyed needling people especially her children and um you know she she was a really good sport about um her Persona as a tough mother and you know our our advertising agency the first one we really ever had um recognized that first of all she was for a long time she was the company president so that was very unusual in the 70s to have a woman in a position of of authority and a company and um that she was in addition to being a tough lady uh she had a sense a humor and so the first ad was a small fractional ad called I can't remember the headline was something about tough mothers that the New Yorker rejected so we knew we had something there you know if the why did they reject it oh I think there was a you know a reference to that they thought uh mother and a and a a commonly following word might be somehow connected and you know it was the New Yorker in the 70s who knows what they were thinking but yeah so they rejected it and um we said you know this is this really means people can recognize something here so that was uh how we began using Girt and her Persona as a tough Taskmaster to to make sure that the products were right and you know it was really true she she always said it's perfect now make it better so you know it was was real interesting stuff unless you were his her children in which case it was a problem for you was there a particular product that she was was especially focused on or was it just everything you know she took a real interest in in the company's historical products headwear she was focused there but then it was uh garments of really apparel she never really even though she liked Footwear she never really understood the Footwear business which is which is a different business but very closely aligned but her her deal was was headwear and then and then the jackets frankly and that's some of the original stuff from Germany right yep that her family had had really so what what was it that makes great headwear that she would focus in on that she would really push people to improve oh you know to be differentiated product you know there's you have to have a similar you have to have sort of standard stuff and then you have to have unusual product and so she would push for unusual stuff frankly the items that she thought were really interesting never really sold very well but you know it was Gert so we did them well but I wonder did they have that effect you look at what say Elon Musk is doing with cyber truck right it's a weird looking truck it's not going to be their top seller they're not going to make that that many of them but there's a certain branding benefit and you know I I'm no expert in marketing or or engineering but it ALS there also seems to be a certain kind of German Legacy of look how well this thing is engineered and it says something about the designers and the company that made it even if you're not buying that specific thing you you know the kind of workmanship you're getting yeah and that was always her her concept was let's make it really well let's make this stuff great and you know she had an idea about a a product from time to time that never really caught on but you know we we still made it and we so off offer it and uh so know we we tried to make sure that we were we were keeping her happy because that made us happy at what point did you take over the company well I mean I I started working you know as I said I i' say I've been here since 1949 but it was as a as a small family business I started out writing catalog copy and you know working in the warehouse and you know helping uh pick product that were made by other vendors that we would then distribute um but really I start after I got out of college and came here full-time and then really got tutored by Ron Nelson in terms of focusing on the items and the the product and the the relationship which were going to really be important to the future of the business um that would probably in the mid 70s something like that and and I think I think I I got the title of President sometime in the 80s I can't really remember when but um and what was the big challenge at that time I this is this is post the the rising success uh of the of the jacket what was the New Horizon in challenge well um as the company grew and I think when we approached uh maybe a couple hundred million doll in sales um my mom was in her 70s and we said Okay so you know there's there's a death tax in Oregon so we're going to have a tax call at some point in time and we need to make sure we have the capital to continue to grow the business so we really started talking about um taking the company public and that was probably the biggest single um area that um really led to me learning a lot and the company learning a lot because running a public company um just takes you to the next level and uh we really had almost nobody here who had the kind of experience required so we uh we were very fortunate that we were able to uh to include the banker that called our note back in the 70s on our board uh we we were able to attract a gentleman named John Stanton now that Banker that called your Note is also the one who connected you with with Nike and R right yep exactly uh and and Ron by that time um was uh he was running apparel for Nike so he had to leave our board and um we've subsequently in invited him back and he he join rejoined our board probably 10 years ago so uh he's back on the board but um we had a really exceptional board which uh was led by John Stanton uh who was the the uh CEO at T-Mobile at the time and Western Wireless and he really helped us to understand how to grow a business run a a well-run public company and and do the right things to to be able to continue to grow the business so we grew the business from uh 19 late 80s to um excuse me we went public in 98 so from there to today we're going to do we went from 200 million to three and a half billion so that sounds like about 15 20 years apart uh a similar like a parallel to this uh shift in the advice and the structure that you need to have to make this sleep first it was kind of saving the company uh you know and and getting the right advice to figure out how to survive and and to scale as a global entity but now it's becoming a public company and becoming um a a a multinational company in a sense um what was the big learning from that period about either how you have to communicate um you know dealing with shareholders what was the big shift during that period that affected uh how you thought as a leader and how the company needed to operate well it's it's really going from from Little League to the major leagues in terms of how you have to structure the business frankly the costs that are involved in running a public business uh the requirements are just exponentially bigger and frankly it gave us the opportunity to to be much more recognized on a International scale so our business went from just a few percentages sales outside the US to now nearly 40% outside the US and really becoming a global brand uh but it it really changed the nature of the business uh in a really good way um our our key employees could could benefit from the the establishment of wealth based on the company uh opportunities and growth of the company and and improvement in our our earnings um and that that became a much bigger more um more important entity uh within the state and and frankly in part of the world that that's all focused on the outdoors so we can have a bigger voice and um it's it's allowed me to be a little bit more um vocal than I otherwise would be and how do you choose to use that voice so for you as a as a leader and how you've grown and shifted with this company do you tend to be more product more sales more policy and overall structure I mean I know you gotta kind of do a bit of it all but where where's your heart in all of that well if I if I had free reign I would be back in the product and working in sales and marketing but you know it's bigger business and requires more uh focus on each of those things and frankly if you're going to be good at the product you need to be in the market all the time and I I can't travel that much with based on my other duties but what I try to do to the extent I can if if there's a significant topic uh that's going to impact our business or our employees I I will issue a com comment I don't tweet you know we we maybe put out a press release or whatever that where we have a a comment about a a topic um but but most of it is frankly around um where we live here in Portland Oregon which um for anybody who's been following the news Portland was the was the darling of of the United States in terms of a progressive place to live and a terrific environment but it's it's fallen on more challenging times and so I've tried to be vocal about we need to take care of this place and and so that's that's an area where I've I've been involved um I've also mentioned when I when I felt our our former president uh got out of bounds I I mentioned that and and um commented and and you know took some lumps but that's okay um you know uh if if you care about something you're willing to take some lumps sometimes bringing me to there's a question I like to ask about what I call a Death Valley a lowest point because I think there's a lot to learn from how one navigates through that so but I want to go not not the 70s we talked about the 70s so so not that but post that and may maybe even um post 1998 what has that been has there been kind of a point where things hit the wall and you really need to rethink um the way you operate well you know there's nothing like uh when the pandemic hit as an example I told my board we really didn't have a strategic plan for a total cessation of business globally you know that was a real you know nobody had ever been through that before and frankly we had um about $700 million in cash at that January I think it was January 2000 or no so anyway January when the p 20 yeah um so we had $700 million in cash and we figured hey we got to go we hadn't had a bank loan probably in 20 years we got to make sure we've got capital in case we need it and guess what there was no Capital available and U so that's a low Point um and there were times when I've s when I've stopped taking a salary uh in order to make sure that the company was was well uh financed uh there have been a number of different times when that's happened and and uh it's important you know if you're if you're the senior shareholder in the company and and a leader you have to be willing to to sacrifice and and make the hard calls um that that are required I mean we've had what's the first time what's the first time sort of post you taking over as president that you decided to stop taking a salary oh the first time was in the late late 90 I'm sorry late 20 late 19 something like that I'd have to go back and look for the specifics but it was a time when the when the company was just not doing well and uh what had happened just in the market The Taste shifted or yeah I mean it was just we we as I said we're a product company and when the products aren't perfect you end up with a with a problem um so you know and the pandemic was another example and so there's been a couple times when I've quit taking the salary and and um it's it's been important um and and we've had to freeze W wages we had just recently we had a um we had to take a small riff uh with the company uh just because the the business was not appropriate we'd allowed our our sgna to get too far and advanced uh and you know these things happen as as the company um matures grows you're just not a linear uh hockey stick you just have to be prepared to to to do what's necessary to keep the business in a in a high quality area and and frankly um our Banker who said you need a fortress balance she you never know what's going to happen you got to have enough Capital to get through it and so you want to make sure you don't get to the point where you're you're low on Capital and an emergency hit so tell me what's the the the core belief that you've gotten through those periods um where you've needed to make tough decisions about remaining in a strong operating positions um even tough decisions like the reduction in force you know layoffs that you just mentioned what what's the core belief that you have that has gotten you through those moments well um you know I'm the largest shareholder and but frankly we have many shareholders and many of our employees are shareholders you have to do right for everybody and that means running the business uh to be the best it can be to be a very profitable rapidly growing business we always consider ourselves to be a growth business and that means you have to think about the business not as a as a fum you've got to think about it as as an area a in a an asset that's got to grow and it has to be well taken care of and so you can't think about your your personal um you know selfish goals of trying to make more money for yourself you have to think about it as making the the business the best it can be and and sustainable So speaking of um talk to me about you're on by my calculation the the third generation right in in the family uh and you have have led the company for the longest period of time and the biggest expansion by far I don't know how much longer you plan to be doing that but I imagine you're thinking about how to set up Columbia sportsware to uh to operate as whatever it's gonna operate as tell me about that well yeah I mean we we have a very strong senior management team that's been at the company for many many years including my son and uh he's got a strong position with the company he's the president of the Columbia brand he's a product guy a good marketer and understands what's required to run the business he's been here a long time my daughter's also involved in the business she's uh on the surel side and doing well there uh at the in the the surel Ecom business um but you know there's a number of managers here who could easily do better than me frankly running the business um but we've got a we've got a long way to go and um I I enjoy working um you know my mom worked almost till the day she died at age 95 uh I don't know that I'll make 95 but I know 94 looks like a good number to me how far away is 94 I'll be 75 in September okay that's pretty far away uh so that's good um so as we had into this period or continue in this period where there's a lot of talk about artificial intelligence right even being involved in uh product design but certainly in product description and in being able to have a lot of variants this reminds me of that catalog that you had before the restructure in the 70s where there was pages and pages of stuff and not necessarily differentiation how do you think about the possibility of having a thousand different variations each with its own description versus the wisdom of doing that and what that means for Colombia's brands well I think think you know obviously um the artificial intelligence that we know today is going to be quite different as we get into the future and so predicting that is something that nobody's been very good at um but we we have some very narrow uses of artificial intelligence today including uh writing romantic copy for our products um the issue that I see is um the importance of the intellectual property that we have and that others have that needs to be protected and um respected so just letting a computer loose to do activities that humans can do and and um that that humans need to understand the importance of intellectual property rights uh whether they be design P patents or actual patents or copyrights whatever um we have to know that we aren't infringing on others assets and that others aren't infringing on ours so um you there'll be new uses for for uh artificial intelligence as we get further along but I think we have to be very careful in terms of protecting our rights and the rights of others in in using it and also since we talked about it before just taking a different turn here earlier in the conversation near the beginning we're talking about tariffs and just how different every country's got its own um its own politics and its own migration patterns and its own uh economies that they're trying to protect there's a lot of talk about tariffs again across the board in the US what are the the strengths and weaknesses of those approaches and their impacts on companies like yours that you think the business Community needs to and the and Washington needs to keep in mind right well so our products textiles and uh textile apparel and Footwear products are the most heavily tariffed in the United States and tariffs that that go our average tariffs are somewhere in the mid teens but we have some products that carry 60% tariff um and frankly that has not stopped the importation of products and has not encouraged domestic production of these products because they're they're not um they're difficult to produce and they're not the preferred employment for many people even though it's it's great work and it's but it's tedious and it's it's not preferred by by most employees so what what's tariffed like 60% oh a technical Footwear certain technical Footwear products have that high tariff it's not a big business for us but we have some of that product um but um no it's you know and I I don't believe that additional tariffs are going to be good for the United States frankly and I don't think they're I we think Trade Fair Trade is really good for all countries you know Mexico for many years had tariffs up to 300% and and that's not uncommon in some of these growing uh Emerging Markets but they don't help they make consumers buy products which are inferior domestically manufactured regardless of where in the world they're made and it it it doesn't allow for for Technologies like we've developed and others have developed to get circulated to consumers in these other markets you know just as an example these tariffs have been established over many many years so in the United States men's the the Tariff on men's Footwear is less than the Tariff on women's Footwear and children's Footwear so you know what happens these tariffs get established and they they're archaic and and and maybe with they may have had some some reason for being at some time but they today they just don't make any sense and changing them is is an arduous task so what's the what's the alternative um the at least obvious theory of these tariffs is okay well we're going to make it more expensive get the cheap Goods in from elsewhere to encourage companies to at least look at um developing this manufacturing and Etc at home or closer to home what should countries and I'm not even just thinking about the United States here what should they do if they're not going to tariff is it a longer term investment in things like education and what's what's the the smart approach to making sure that that domestic worker those domestic Industries are taken care of well you know I'm I'm not I probably shouldn't even be commenting but I I will say that you know CH making consumers pay more for products doesn't seem to me to make any sense I I we're a free Trader we we believe that as uh consumers uh have the availability to receive merchandise and and re and receive Goods um at which are lower cost are going to be good not only for the consumer but if you think about the the change in Asia so when I was growing up cheap importations came from Japan those those cheap importations are not available from Japan because the economy of Japan grew based on the the the interaction with the rest of the world and now is a very wealthy country that can't produce inexpensive Goods so the next location was either Taiwan or Korea both of which have virtually no production of textile products uh today um you know China today our business in China is primarily populated with products that are sourced outside of China because it's expensive to make merchandise in China and you know so if you go around the world consumers uh sourcing of products in these very markets have lifted them today we're working in in Syria uh excuse me in Jordan uh with Syrian workers that are you know it's going to be an area where that that uh economy is going to grow Africa is an area obviously many many poor people and they're we beginning to Source product in Africa and and so I see the consumption of goods by markets around the world helping these other markets grow and become more more more valuable and and and viable well from CNBC you won't get any argument from me there on free market capitalism and the impact that it has had both here and abroad um although you know you look at the the cautionary tail around China over the last few decades it doesn't always turn out exactly how you think either right that's right well Tim uh it has been great talking to you and learning about both Columbia Sports SAR the family's Legacy and how much you've grown that and also about your own personal story thank you for joining me at Fort Knox Hey Jo thank you for including me