S6E9: Relentless Innovation: When Brand Stewardship Meets Pushing the Envelope

Transcript:

Erin Narloch  00:00

Hey, welcome to The History Factory Podcast. I’m your host. Erin Narloch. Today for our conversation, we’re joined by Steven Smith, veteran footwear designer. He has been in the industry designing for over 40 years and has designed for every major brand. He goes into them in greater detail, but he has worked for New Balance, for Adidas, for Reebok, for Nike, for Kanye, and currently he is at Crocs, overseeing design innovation. During our conversation, you might hear him referencing me personally and my relationship with Reebok. He is definitely talking about a time where I oversaw the global brand archive in Boston, and Steven visited many times. During our conversation today, we had the opportunity to talk about the importance of personal archives, the use of brand archives, and kind of the future of archiving in this digital age. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did, and just a big thank you to Steven for making the time to talk with us. He is a very busy guy, and we just really appreciate the time he took. Let’s get into that conversation.

 

Erin Narloch  01:40

Steven, thank you so much for being with us today. Can you just give us the bright and brief, the high level of who you are and what you’ve done over time? 

 

Steven Smith  01:50

Yeah, I mean, I’m an industrial designer by education, and it’s one of the things I’ve always loved. I love stuff, and I loved problem solving and making things better, and that mentality has driven a lot of what I’ve done over the years. So I always laugh. I say I ran high school track. It’s like Al Bundy, and I like to run. And so when I graduated from school, I needed a job, and New Balance was hiring their second ever full time designer, and I got hired the next day after I interviewed. And it was great, because I got to design things I used, you know, and that I had intimate knowledge of. And so that led me on a long career in sporting goods, primarily footwear, but I’ve done other things, apparel, smart apparel, electronics, vehicles, military equipment, all kinds of crazy things… in line skates and so you know, 40… 40, years of it, working for several of the major brands and some smaller brands. Each has had their own advantage and interest and excitement through all of it. And, you know, it’s funny, people are like, oh, did you plan your career? Did you do this? No, you know, I just kind of, I needed a job. I like to run. And I ran in New Balances. So it kind of made sense to go there for my first job. And there they instilled a bunch of interesting thought process and everything, and how my brain works and and how it worked to begin with, but it enhanced a few things. So again, primarily sporting goods and footwear, and the ones that I’ve done have been really interesting over the 40 years. I’m probably like, this weird unicorn that, you know, at 61 I’m competing with my 21 year old self in the marketplace, because those initial designs that I did at New Balance are still relevant and stronger than ever in the market. And every brand I’ve worked for over the years always has something that has never gone out of production. So it’s, it’s, it’s fascinating, bewildering, you know, and humbling. And you know, for me, after the all those years of it, it’s very exciting still to see somebody who bought one of your products. You kind of want to go up and thank them for appreciating your own appreciating your art and your design over the years. So that’s kind of it at the moment. I’ve done, like I said, multiple brands. New Balance, Nike, Reebok, Yeezy with Kanye, which was a lot of fun, and now Crocs and HEYDUDE and Adidas. twice, and Keen and North Face, lots of fun. I did some funny stuff for Dickies. I did some steel toe construction boots for Dickies. Like I said, I did some military equipment for the US Army Special Forces, and I did some telecommunication and switch devices for Bell Laboratories back in the ’90s as well.

 

Erin Narloch  05:27

So interesting. So you’re, I think you’re proof that a career is a marathon. It is not a sprint, right? That you really, really can cross, cross over different genres and different in work with different brands and different technologies and different industries themselves.

 

Steven Smith  05:50

Yeah, and I think that’s what was fun about all of it. You know, in those early days of Reebok and innovation, we were free to explore and go look at anything and everything and get ideas and envisions from those things. So it really opened your mind as to what you could see and what you could do with things. Rather than just thinking of a sneaker, we were looking at aerospace, we’re looking at biomedical equipment, figuring out how to adapt, adjust or integrate it into what we were doing in the product.

 

Erin Narloch  06:20

Yeah, amazing. So you’re somebody, I would say, within footwear, within sneakers, that’s known to have a pretty massive personal archive and a personal collection. How do you reference both what you’ve done in the past and your own kind of collective memory of what you’ve contributed? And and then, when you’re working at a brand, when they have a brand archive, how do you, how do you kind of tap into both.

 

Steven Smith  06:46

You know, it’s, it’s really interesting is, you have a lot of mine, or had a lot of mine at Reebok in the end, but, you know, I, I keep a lot of stuff, stuff I designed, stuff other people designed for referencing. And Kanye in particular, was big on that, where he would research history of fashion and art design and send us reference photos of random things. And sometimes he’d send me my own stuff, and it’d be like, oh, yeah, you want to see that one? I got the, you know, I got it at home. And he’s like, what? You know, nobody has that. I said, Well, yeah, I do. 

 

Steven Smith  07:10

But so it’s good to go back and look, because you could see ideas that you had that maybe were 80% baked. Or, you know, I always say, true innovation takes a moment of desperation, and the company may not have been desperate enough yet to risk it all on a new idea or a new concept and and so they were shelved. And doesn’t mean they were a bad idea, is it just there was a moment in time where they were right, or there was a moment in time where they weren’t right? There’s no such thing as a bad idea. And so I think it was great to have those things for the reference how you did something, a molding technique, a process. And I think as it got into some of the things with with Yeezy, for example, he always wanted to push the envelope on different things. And some of the development people on the collaborating company side, it’s like, Oh, it can’t be done. It’s never been done. And I’d pull something out from 20 years earlier. I’m like, look, this is how we molded it back then. What do you mean it can’t be done today? You know, we pioneered this. And they’re like, well, you can’t do it again. I’m like, well, why? So it was really good for that, just to show people things that had been done or were possible because, I mean, that’s the thing that we do as, you know, a true designer or visionary, is you’re trying to drag people into the future with you, and it’s a challenge. Sometimes I put up a thing one time that I feel like the the Tesla of of sporting goods, because you have these visions and ideas, and people just aren’t there with you yet, and 20 years later, all of a sudden, they’re like, oh, wow, isn’t that cool? I’m like, well, yeah, look at it. There it is. You know, I tried explaining that to you. Or, you know, something comes out, like the Fury, for example, and it just builds and builds and builds all these years. 35 plus years, that thing still looks futuristic and new and and fresh. It’s in museums and exhibits. Is something from the future, even though it’s from ’92. I think a lot of those things are good to go back as a point of reference, and I collected things product wise, that I was interested in, beyond my own work. You know, obviously I keep my own work for my portfolio and my reference and my art, and go from there. But there’s other things, other people’s design. That I admired. And that’s what I always tell some of the young kids. It’s like, go design something that I wish I designed, because that’s what I want to see. When something comes out, I want to go, oh, wow, that’s so cool. I wish I did that. And then you want to one up it, or top it, or compete, compete with it, because that’s what you know you’re you’re trying to get a consumer’s money, and that’s what you try to do with it.

 

Erin Narloch  10:27

That’s true. You were just mentioning something. It was interesting to me, this idea of like crossing the chasm, when people are not yet with you, and you want them to come with you along the journey of selling a concept or an idea, how do you how do you do that? And do you reference the work that you’ve done, kind of in your your your history, to help show and demonstrate what can be done?

 

Steven Smith  10:55

I think it’s, I think it’s hard within a corporate structure, because a lot of people want to play it safe. And also, you know, I did want to touch back on the reference thing, because it’s important for a company to have an archive, because then you can go see things that were done. If you have a new idea, you’re like, ohh, look at this. And like, oh, we tried that. And you’re like, oh, okay. Or they pull something out, and you’re like, oh, that’s interesting, you know, but it then informs you, like, okay, how can I revisit that and improve it, or make it appropriate for the market that it didn’t, it wasn’t at the time, or refresh it or reinvigorate it. So that, that, I think, is one of the important things of an archive. 

 

Steven Smith  11:34

But to the to the other point, it’s, it’s, it can be very difficult, because you’re, you’re kind of like an attorney, and you’re trying to build your case for your product. Or, you know, I always look at it as you’re the proud parent of your child. You want it to grow up and do well, you want it to get into that college. You want it to get a good job. And that’s what you’re trying to do with with the the idea, the design, the concept is convince people like, you know, take the risk and that. That has always been one of my frustrations with a lot of the corporations, is that they themselves got their start by being a risk taker and offering something that was an alternative to what was already out there. And they get their their big success, their breakthrough, but then they pull back and become extra conservative, and then they get incremental growth, or no growth, and then complain, why? Whereas you have to remind them, like, you know you you took this risk and the risk paid off. You got the explosive growth from it, or you took that place in the marketplace. 

 

Steven Smith  12:34

I look at Lululemon right now. They’re they’re wavering a little bit, but Lululemon is what Reebok was for women’s fitness. That’s where Reebok should have been. It’s where Reebok should be. And you know, and now ALO is coming in eating Lululemon’s lunch, because they got conservative and relaxed and didn’t reference things and realize, like, okay, we’ve been here. We’ve done that. How can we move forward? And it’s always not leaving things behind or forgetting where you came from. It’s expanding upon that and growing, you know, that’s the thing it’s with… with growth in dollars comes growth in in the company itself, and growth in the DNA and the brand. And I think a lot of that’s forgotten, or people come too conservative and don’t take risks. That was the again, one of the refreshing things about that time period at Reebok with Paul Fireman is he removed us from the hairball to take the risks, to push the absolute envelope that 20 years later, they were still dropping things that we had done, because we were allowed that freedom to create. And, you know, you hit road blocks when it came time to put it into the market and and also when, when you were challenged in charge with coming up with all of these new ideas, sometimes you have way more than a company can digest, or they want to digest. Yeah, it’s always a challenge. So take the risk. Believe in what you’re doing, and out of it can come magic. I’ve always done that, you know, and again, it’s you suffer. You suffer from it. You suffer the anxiety. Am I doing the right thing? But then also you can suffer within the corporate structure by being labeled a problem. Because I, you know, I eventually I got labeled as problematic at Reebok because I believed in what I was doing and but, you know, time is told that it was the right thing, and those things were the right thing, and it was worth it to push through the roadblocks for the product success. Because at the, you know, at the end of the day, I’m I’m about product. Money is fine. It can buy you fun toys and things, but a legacy and product is what was important to me, and that’s what I like to leave behind. 

 

Erin Narloch  14:54

Yeah, evident in your career and the work that you’ve done, hopping back. Back to the the value of having, you know, a brand or a corporate archive as being a place that you can go to find reference materials or see what has been done before or revisit… Can you…You know you’re relatively new in the role that you’re in now. Is that a trip you made. Did you go into the archive? If you did, what were you looking for?

 

Steven Smith  15:24

That’s the first thing I did, was find out where it was, and then went through all the shelves and talked to all the people who had been there for 10 plus years. Like, what have we done? You know, what’s innovation to you? I think all of those things are important. Because you can go through the archive and go, wow, this was innovative. What happened to that? And, oh, we didn’t do that, or we didn’t execute it, right? And you can, you can definitely learn from all of that. I mean, that’s, that’s the beauty of having it as a library. You know, I love Tesla, but Edison did say something clever. Where I’ve never failed. I found 10,000 ways not to do something. And I think that’s the beauty of of being able to rifle through an archive, because then you can also capture the DNA of what the brand is. And that’s, I think that’s one of the gifts I’ve been given, is this ability to go in and be a creative chameleon within a brand and show them. You know, it’s kind of what I’m doing with Crocs. And HEYDUDE, right now, show them what they can be, as opposed to change them to what I am. If I wanted to do that, I’d start my own company or be a hired gun. And I’m not that. I go in to enhance a brand and and help them grow and show them what they can be. And I think, I think it’s, it’s an important thing, and it’s a distinction where a lot of people fail. Where they come in and like, I’m gonna leave my fingerprint on this. I’m like, I’m not. I’m just gonna help you, because that’s what, that’s what we should do, right? And that’s what I’ve helped them to do so far at Crocs is see a new vision and see what the brand can become. And I think it’s, it’s already been successful. You know that the first rollout of the product sold out by noon. So that was good.

 

Erin Narloch  17:11

It is great. Okay, so moving into, can you think to your own, to something within your own archive that you’ve directly, directly referenced to either solve a design challenge or to be kind of an evidence of of a way of looking at thing or something, or a teaching tool.

 

Steven Smith  17:34

So I think you know case in point, the Ripple that I just did with Crocs. Hold on one second, because I’m going to get it is, for me, growing up, my absolute design hero was Syd Mead. He was the futurist, the master. That’s who you want it to be when you’re in design school, to have that visual thing. So for me, you know, Syd. Syd is a huge or, you know, since he passed away, but was a huge influence. I got to meet him in the end. You know, Reebok gave me that opportunity when we brought him in, and I just stayed friends with him all those years, and would always go hang out with him, be inspired. And, you know, for like the Crocs Ripple that I’m doing, the color away, the shape, the form, the disc shape, you know it. It goes back to some of the work that Syd had done for Tron. And, you know, I surrounded myself with the Light Cycle and Tron imagery. I’ve got every color of the Light Cycle toy up here on a shelf, but the blue one. If you look, you know that that blue and white was the futuristic, the reference to the future. So, you know, here’s your here’s your blue reference right there. And so again, surrounding myself with with items or things and designs that influence me, this was a perfect case in point, because I had it right here in front of me. And there was something cool about all the designs that Syd had done, very streamlined, very fast, very futuristic. And you know, it’s one of the conversations that Kanye had, and I had with a with a future he said, Go pick out some future colors. He had all these hoodie sleeves on display, and it was a whole range of colors. So I went and picked out all these clean, bright cheery colors. And he, he kind of went nuts on me, and was like, what the hell is that? You know, I want phlegm. I want death. I want blah blah, blah, blah, blah, and I’m like, hold on a minute, brother, you know. You told me pick sci fi. I said, we’re two different generations. I said, this is an important thing. I said, my generation was 2001 Original Star Trek. It was very optimistic. It was clean, it was futuristic. It was white and bright, and, you know, a very optimistic future. I said, 10 years later, when you grew up, 15 years later, I said it was Aliens. You know, it was HR Geiger, it was death. It was things getting killed. It was, you know, Robocop. And I said, that’s the difference. I said, so your interpretation of what that is is very different than mine. So then he apologized.

 

Erin Narloch  20:33

Yeah, I think that’s a very interesting insight, that generational cohort and how you imagine, kind of collecting.

 

Steven Smith  20:40

We looked at the possibility of what the future could be, and and opening, opening a new era. And, you know, the other people were like, death, destruction, end of days. And I think that that type of thing is important for a reference. So I pulled up all these references from the movies that I referenced when I picked those colors for him, you know, a new a new day, a new era. The future was there, the possibility. And that was one of those early conversations he and I always had, was like, where’s that future we were promised? Let’s just build it ourselves. And that’s kind of what we did with some of the Yeezy product. It’s very different. It’s very futuristic. 

 

Steven Smith  21:18

But again, it kind of gets back to what I said in the beginning, of not so much desperation with him, but he was willing to risk it all on every product launch that we did, and you got that explosive growth every time, as opposed to like incremental and conservatism and safety. It was very unsafe and unsure, and people questioned it, and we were the perfect foil for each other, because I was like, you know, I don’t drink, but it was that, hold my beer mentality, oh, won’t be done. That’s what I always waited for, was somebody say it can’t be done. Watch this and again, you know, it’s, are you, are you an irritant, or you would answer? And product wise, I was always the answer. Organizationally, maybe I was an irritant, I don’t know.

 

Erin Narloch  22:08

Yeah. So moving, moving on, like thinking of as design moves further and further into digital and AI rendering, like, what’s the tactile value of physical archive, like of product, of objects. And for you, just out of curiosity, how is your creation? You know, process? Do you kind of wax in and out of digital and analog and sketching? And how does that kind of happen? 

 

Steven Smith  22:40

I still draw everything by hand on my iPad, but iPad as a digital tool, so it’s kind of a blur and a blend. So it’s still all drawn by hand, but using the Apple Pencil within Sketchbook Pro. Sometimes Procreate, although I like the tools better in Sketchbook Pro, and then that’s transferred over to a 3D designer who does my CAD and 3D ready for the 3D printing. So it, you know, end of stream, it becomes a digital tool, and then becomes 3D printed. I don’t use AI on purpose, but it’s interesting is that, as we talk about how our brain works, that’s all AI is doing, is pulling from this archive that’s there. And so I’ve seen some amazing things done with AI for rendering, which is fine, but I, I find it kind of a crutch and lame, because if you can’t draw, then it becomes just this, this crutch, or this, you know, weak tool for your inability. And I just was trained formal drawing, and I think that drawing has helped me shape the forms and lines that I use by by feeling the form as you draw, that you know how it’s going to be in three dimensions, that’s kind of lost in some of the AI things. I mean, they’re beautiful renderings. But the problem is, is it’s still, it’s artificial. The, you know, the the authentic analog intelligence is right here. And without what we did up here to build the basis and the archive, there’d be nothing for AI to feed off of, because that’s what it’s doing. It’s feeding, chewing and spitting back out something that it’s harvested. It’s not creating it.

 

Erin Narloch  24:36

And that interesting and visceral description of AI.

 

Erin Narloch  24:39

Visualizing in particular. 

 

Steven Smith  24:39

Yeah, it’s kind of, you know, it was funny. They did a thing for Sneaker Freaker. They interviewed a bunch of famous design people, and everybody else was, like, gushing and oohing and ahhing because it was…I don’t know, I look at it as kind of a lazy man’s tool. But I was the only negative person who said, you know, it’s like going to a master chef in a restaurant, getting a seven course gourmet meal, right? There’s something about like that, that appetizer that’s just amazing, and it’s set up as this beautiful appetizer in its own world. And then a soup, and the soup has this beautiful finish to it, right? And then you have the main course and the side, the side dishes, and they’re all prepared just so. And, you know, there’s a little drizzle of gravy that’s this beautiful last touch. And, you know, a sprig of a green to be decor. And the things just it’s a visual masterpiece as well as, you know, a dietary masterpiece, and then an incredible dessert as the finish, right? We’re like, oh yeah, that’s amazing. You know, perhaps an espresso. AI to me is you threw it all in a bowl, or, you know, a Vitamix and spun the thing around and dumped it back on the plate. Yeah, it’s all the same ingredients. It’s the same meal. But did you savor it? Enjoy it? Was it artistic? Was it? Was it beauty? And it was kind of funny that I was the only one who who criticized it. But I mean, if you think about it, that’s really all it’s doing. It’s harvesting things. And, I mean, it’s a good tool if you want to write things, yeah, but, but…

 

Steven Smith  25:25

Yeah, you know it’s, it is kind of fun to see people do rudimentary sketches and have this thing finish it off for them. That’s fine, but I don’t know, I find it hard to present it as your own work.

 

Steven Smith  26:33

No, I think that’s, I think that’s…

 

Steven Smith  26:41

That’s, that’s my two cents, whether you like it or not.

 

Erin Narloch  26:44

No, that’s great. Not like it, but yeah, that’s true. How do you, how do you grow your own personal archive? Are you? Are you you’re creating? So I want to think you’re actively building it. But how do you ensure the kind of the longevity of what you have in your collection. 

 

Steven Smith  27:04

You know, it’s getting harder and harder because it takes up a lot of space. You know, right now, my studio in here is an absolute disaster. I would show it to you, but I’m embarrassed, because I keep getting all of the Crocs and the HEYDUDE prototypes and every round of it, every color, and they keep sending it to me. And I’m like, I don’t have a place to put it. You know, I got all my other my die cast cars and toys and my Tron stuff, and I got guitars and all kinds of things over here, and it’s having a hard time walking through. It’s feeling hoarder like, but I need to take, like, a week and just clean this mess up and organize it all. But it is nice to have it all in front of me so that I can visually look at it. I’ve had to put some stuff away and in offsite storage spaces, just because I’ve got no room left, you know. And I sold a bunch of a bunch of stuff off just because I don’t know, it degenerates. It’s kind of like when you know, you end up with some of the stuff from Reebok. It kind of belonged back there to spark ideas for people, as opposed to rotting away in my basement. I don’t know what happened to it all since you left. Hopefully they’re preserving some of it somewhere.

 

Erin Narloch  28:22

Yeah, that’s, that’s always the hope. But there is,

 

Steven Smith  28:27

I, I like to have it in front of me. So, you know, I’ve got replicas of my own cars, you know. I like, I like guitars. I got my guitar amp back here, various skateboards and things and…

 

Erin Narloch  28:42

Yeah, surrounded by visual Velcro, that’s for sure.

 

Steven Smith  28:45

Should be, it should be, you know, it’s like a studio is a studio, right? It’s not just place to work. It’s a place to be inspired and you want to work in. So I’ve surrounded myself with a lot of fun visual things.

 

Erin Narloch  28:59

That’s great. So kind of, we’ll wrap things up with this question, but thinking of your role, and where you sit in in Crocs, how do you use and leverage the brand’s archive to help mentor, kind of younger designers on contributing to the brand’s identity as well as their own personal growth during periods of like rapid expansion.

 

Steven Smith  29:27

I think it’s key to be able to just have it accessible. I think that’s the biggest thing, is have it accessible and be able to just walk through it and see it. I mean, you know, Elizabeth does a great job with the Bata Shoe Museum of having these rotating exhibits, or having them to have different art galleries so that people can see different different ideas on what what footwear is, and what sporting goods equipment is, and high fashion. It’s, it’s, I think it’s critical. To take them down and say, oh, well, this is what the company was launched on. That’s a critical point in the DNA. How can we maintain that? Or some, some thread of it. And that’s what Kanye would yell at Adidas all the time. You know, Steven’s the he is Yeezy. He’s my eyes and hands. He’s that collective DNA thread that goes through every product we release. And I think it’s critical to think that way, like you’re the you’re the vessel. You’re the carrier for this company. Have some love, have some joy. Understand it, understand its past, so that you can get to a new future, or preserve, preserve that essence of what, what the brand is. And I think that’s important too. And I think that was one of the amazing things that you were able to pull off at Reebok to show these people like, no, no. This is where it came from. These are the things that we did. And I again, I think it’s important so that you don’t duplicate efforts, but you’re always moving forward and improving. Because my development guy at Nike, this British kid, Chris Cook, and I got pissed because we looked up, we were the innovation team for running. And we got pissed because innovation meant new and different. It didn’t mean new and better. Oh, we were so upset, and that’s what you want to do. So you can go look at how we solved a problem before, or you take a stab at something like, was it really better? Why am I doing it? Because the world doesn’t need more crap. The world needs better stuff. So that’s always been my point of view on it. Am I making it better? If not, then why am I making it? Anybody can do that. Making it ,making it new and better is, that’s the hard part. So teaching them that showing them failures, because failures are important, to learn how to succeed and to see things that were tried because maybe there was a really cool foam back in there that didn’t work out in that application. But, you know, oh, it was, we tried to put it on the top of the instep. Well, what if it was under foot and just in your forefoot and heel? And now all of a sudden you have this really nice comfort story that you went and trolled through the archive and saw something that somebody else had a really cool idea for the company, but they didn’t, they didn’t quite bake it all the way, you know. It’s one of the few things you can put it back in the oven and cook it a few more and come out with some amazing, tasty dish.

 

Erin Narloch  32:35

There we go. I love that. Yeah, I really appreciated the way you just kind of summated that the idea of what brand stewardship is, that the importance of context right in all of these situations, failures or successes, what were the the conditions for success, or the conditions that surrounded the things for failure? And then, how can you do it better in the future?

 

Steven Smith  33:01

Yeah, I mean, and as as companies go through attrition and replacement of staff and employees a little bit each time a hit piece of history or DNA is lost, every time they go, so it’s, it’s good to have some kind of semblance or understanding to go back to to understand where it came from. Why? Why do we exist as a company? You know, there’s a lot of things people can put on their feet, but give it that magic that made the brand… powerful in the first place. It’s kind of funny, like this one people like, Oh, it’s this, it’s that. But when I don’t have the piece here. I wish I did. It’s over in a box over there. But when you take away the white part, the white part is kind of like a carrier and a chassis for this blue comfort foam inside. And when you strip away the white part, it’s essentially a streamlined, classic crop clog in there without the heel strap on it. The blue, the blue because it’s, it’s kind of too sharp, too density, and it people like, oh. You see the DNA, and it’s, it’s there, but they didn’t even, it’s like, subconscious, almost.

 

Erin Narloch  34:14

Yeah, that’s good design, right? 

 

Steven Smith  34:16

Well, it’s pretty cool. You have to discover it. Yeah, there’s something, you know, that’s the beauty. There’s, there’s something about it, but you can’t put your finger on it until you do and you’re like, oh God, it, you know, it’s right there in front of me. Why didn’t I see it? Or why didn’t I understand it? That’s that acknowledgement of that, that DNA or the brand story. You don’t want to get lost.

 

Erin Narloch  34:42

No.

 

Steven Smith  34:44

Stay true to the company you know,

 

Erin Narloch  34:46

Great well. Thank you so much for your time today, Steven, I really appreciate it.

 

Steven Smith  34:51

Sure anytime.

 

Erin Narloch  34:53

All right, there you have it. The conversation. Conversation with Steven Smith, I hope everyone listening has the opportunity to look at a Ripple from Crocs and compare it to Tron. Also, you know, think about your footwear a little differently and kind of the stories behind the products that are being made. All of that context and that brand stewardship, a big thank you again to Steven for your time on the podcast and for all of our listeners out there, until next time, thank you and have a great day.