UGG: Brian Smith. How an epiphany, surfers, and $500 launched an iconic sheepskin footwear company.

I could see it coming so clearly. In fact the pre-season orders Looked like the company was going to be destined for you know uh uh eighteen million, maybe even twenty million dollars. But I knew I would not be able to finance an extra five, six, seven million dollars in product.

And most people would be so excited about that. I saw this as a kiss of death. Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements. They don't. Guy Raz and on the show today how Brian Smith brought Australian sheepskin boots to America.

that turned UGS into a multi-billion dollar brand. In 1979, a 32-year-old Australian named Brian Smith decided to import boots from Australia and sell them in the US. At the time, Brian was living in Southern California, and the boots he was importing were made from wool and sheepskin. In Australia, everyone called them Uggs. because they were ugly, not because it was a brand name. Lots of small factories made their own versions of these same Ug boots. But when Brian tried to sell them in the US, he could barely move inventory. It would take more than a decade before he'd find any traction with consumers. He made mistake after mistake. He ran out of cash, he lost control of the company, then got it back, then nearly lost it again.

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript, segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

10 free credits is 10 episodes like this one a month. Episodes nobody has transcribed yet cost their length in hours, because we have to actually transcribe them.