Life During Lockdown: Ryan Babenzien
Ryan and I became friends when I worked at the LA Marathon and he worked at our footwear and apparel partner K-Swiss. We were both super excited about the intersection of sports and culture. We still are. He founded GREATS brand footwear in New York in 2014, and last year the business was acquired by Steve Madden. The GREATS direct to consumer model of providing high quality, stylish sneakers at affordable prices is really smart. They’ve become one of the shining DTC success stories of the last 10 years. Whenever I’m in NYC, or Ryan comes back to LA, we try and catch up on life and business.
1. Give me some highlights and lowlights from your first month in lockdown mode
There are so many on both sides but I’ll start with the lowlights. Like most businesses we had to furlough the retail team and a few of the team members from the office. That is the ultimate lowlight but a necessary action to make sure GREATS is in healthy shape and can endure this crisis . Of course business for the first few weeks was pretty hairy so that really sucked. But, no one at GREATS got sick and we called WFH almost a week ahead of most companies. I had gotten some reliable information that I acted on, and I’m glad I did. Keeping every one safe was the priority and it was a very easy choice to make in an extremely difficult crisis. But now for the past few weeks business has picked back up and started to show a predictable cadence and one that we can not only live with but have opportunity to accelerate the business in a way that was not possible just a few weeks ago. So I’m cautiously optimistic of how this plays out, and I am constantly reminding the team that building a brand is a marathon not a sprint…Maybe even an ultra marathon!
2. How have you grown personally and professionally during this disruption?
I’ve become newly inspired by what is possible — Challenging my own beliefs and increasing my curiosity muscle, which I have naturally but over the past 8 weeks I’ve really allowed myself to dive into things and question things that I wasn’t doing a few weeks ago. It’s really inspiring to me because I think it’s what makes good entrepreneurs better. This actually crosses over professionally. An example is me asking “why do we need to work from the office everyday” if we’ve been able to maintain a very high level of productivity wfh for the past two months. I don’t have the answer but I can tell you that our work week will not look like our work week pre covid.
3. Has your relationship with your work changed as a result of being home alone and not collaborating in person with your colleagues?
It has but oddly I think it’s for the better. I still believe in person is the most valuable way to do things, but it may not be the way all the time. There is likely a more optimal way to work that included on site, off site strung together with digital tools that we were already using but now are using them differently. My job is to find that optimal balance.
4. What permanent changes do you see coming out of this crisis? Any things that will change forever?
I think we’re going to see behavior change in almost everything we do. To simplify it, analog things (going to store, going to school, going to office) will evolve to a more digital experience. Not entirely of course but a combo that should improve the way we do things. That does not mean this is a good thing long term but it’s going to happen. If we begin to separate ourselves in just these three areas, there will be a further delineation in society by socioeconomics, race, and so on. That’s not good long term.
5. Can brands like Greats create positive change in the world during the pandemic?
Absolutely. Not only do I think we can, I think we need to. We joined a new coalition of like minded brands called bandsforbetter. It started a few weeks ago and GREATS was one of the founding brands. It started as 32 brands and is now over 100 who are all committed to giving back to the community in need. GREATS is donating $15 of every purchase to City Harvest here in NY which can feed a family of 3 for 2 weeks. To date, brandsxbetter has raised over $1m. This all happened in a matter of days to get off the ground and weeks to do some serious good. At GREATS we have a saying “The Greatest People consider the Collective” and this is an example of that in action. Like I said, I’m inspired by what is possible.
