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Hey everyone, it's Guy here.
So this week we're bringing you a really great episode from the archive.
It's with Missy Park, who came on the show to tell the story of Title 9, the women's sports apparel brand.
The company had a pretty rocky launch in the late 1980s.
But, as you'll hear, a last -minute addition to its mail order catalog changed everything.
This episode first ran back in October of 2021, and I hope you enjoy it.
So, you get these catalogs, 15 or 20 ,000 catalogs, and how did you do?
How many orders did you get from those?
So we put those catalogs and then I'm just waiting for the phone to ring.
And? Waiting. And? Waiting.
Okay. And I think we got a whopping maybe 15 orders, maybe 7 of them were from someone that I did not know.
Wow, that's for mailing out over 20 ,000 catalogs.
That's the hit rate.
Super sad. Super sad.
Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.
I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how Missy Park's frustration with bad -fitting sports gear led her to launch Title IX, one of the very first American sportswear brands exclusively for women.
About a year ago, I was riding my bike near the railroad tracks in Berkeley, California, when I passed a clothing store with an unusual name.
The store was called Title IX, and I thought it might have something to do with a law, but a law I couldn't remember right at that moment.
So a few days later, I looked it up.
Title IX, I was reminded, was a U .S. civil rights law passed in 1972.
It prohibited discrimination based on sex in any federally funded school or educational program.
And among the things the law did was to open up high school and college sports to women.
Colleges and universities that received federal dollars now had to provide the same opportunities for women to participate in sports as they did for men.
In that year, 1972, less than 20 percent of all the athletes on the U .S. Olympic team were women.
But by 2016, nearly 55 percent of the team was female.
And much of this is because of Title IX.
The same year Title IX was required to take effect in schools, 1976, Missy Park joined her high school basketball team in Greenville, South Carolina.
She'd go on to play Division 1 basketball at Yale.
But after years of wearing bad -fitting sports apparel as a student athlete, Missy decided to solve her own problem.
And in 1989, long before anyone would hear the names Lululemon or Athleta, Missy Park founded Title IX, one of the first brands to make sports apparel for women.
Today, many of those other brands are multi -billion dollar companies.
either backed by venture capital or publicly traded, but Title IX is comparatively small.
This year, it will do roughly $100 million in revenue.
And unlike its competitors, Title IX is owned only by one person, Missy Park.
She bootstrapped the brand from day one and built it very, very slowly.
If the company grew by five or even 10 % a year, And that was considered a victory.
And that slow growth has allowed the company to build a sustainable and supportive culture.
Missy Park grew up in the 60s and 70s in Greenville, South Carolina, in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains.
Her dad was a World War II veteran and became kind of an overnight entrepreneur when he bought the small manufacturing company that he once worked for.
And as for her mom?
My mom, on the other hand, was a stay -at -home mom, and we always accuse her of being part of a secret feminist cell in Greenville, South Carolina in the sixties.
Because she was ...
what? She thought women ought to be paid for birthing babies.
Yeah. I would say that was pretty ahead of her time.
My mom and dad had separate checking accounts.
I remember my mom fighting to get her credit card in her own name rather than in Mrs. Russell Hunter Park.
So my mom loved being a full -time homemaker, but she thought it was a position worth paying for.
And this was really, I mean, this is, people don't remember, I mean the seventies was, I mean, this is the era of ERA, equal rights amendment, and of Shirley Chisholm and Bella Abzug, you know, with her hats, right?
There was huge leaps and strides that happened in the 70s and from your description of your mom, she was either secretly harboring those feelings or maybe not so secretly harboring them.
Yeah, well, you know, my parents were so unusual.
Like my mom was in charge of the girls and our allowances and we had budgets and we had to reconcile at the end of every month and we had to give money to savings and to offerings and each year we would take on other responsibilities, it was her expectation that we would go up to be financially independent women capable of running our own finances in our own life.
Yeah. And as a little girl, maybe even a young teen, did you know for sure you were not going to end up living in Greenville, South Carolina?
No. I would say I'm the kind of person that maybe everybody else is for sure about it, and no one's more surprised than me.
I really loved growing up in Greenville.
It was at the time a great place for me.
It's a small place.
I could ride my bike everywhere.
I was in that first generation of girls and women that were able to grow up with Title IX being in effect all the way through high school and all the way through college.
And of course Title IX just kind of opened up sports for women and girls at the time, and you got to play lots of things.
Yes, I got to play every sport.
Coming up when I did, especially as a girl, you just played all the sports.
And if you were willing to play and you were willing to try, you were pretty good because there weren't as many women pouring into the sports and fields as there are now.
So yes, we will say, guy, I think that I was a big fish in a very small pond.
I think that's what I'll say.
Well, I'm curious because here you are, you are in a small southern town in the 70s.
Being a debutante is a, was, and some extent still is, but less so, was a kind of a cultural phenomenon in the South, was there, like, were you a debutante, for example?
Oh my gosh, I hate your guts right now.
So let's just go on the record right now, I hate your guts.
Yes I was a debutante.
Now you and me and all of your listeners know that.
And in my home office here you could see my little rebellion against that.
There's a picture of me at what about 19 and a white gown with long Gloves that actually won't go up above my upper arm and biceps, sadly.
Um, and I'm spinning a basketball and I have my basketball sneakers on.
So you were forced or kind of pressured to be a debutante?
You know, here's the danger of things like that.
I'm just a kid. This is where I grew up and now I look back on it and I see it differently.
but it was one of those things you know I loved my mom and dad and had very quickly understood like there's some battles that if you can give in and it's not much skin off my back yeah then I should just do it because it's gonna make my mom so happy mmm but it is the source of a lot of amusement amongst my family and close friends more because it's so different from who you are from who I am.
Exactly. And how would you describe yourself as a teenager?
Were you, did you get along with everybody?
Were you a pleaser?
No, definitely not a pleaser.
I would say I'm pretty loud.
I speak before I think.
I have strong opinions that can change quickly.
I think I was an okay student.
I think I got along well with most folks.
Yeah. I mean, you must've been better than an okay student cause you went to Yale, you attended Yale.
Yeah, yeah. Well, I will also tell you this, that we joke about at my family, but my parents' single greatest failing is that they have a daughter that went to Yale.
Because? There's an awful lot of good schools in the south.
Sure. And there are, yeah.
So I think that my parents really wanted me to go to one of those great Southern schools.
All right, you're at 1980 I think, about 1980.
You get to New Haven.
Yep. You played several sports there, lacrosse, tennis, and basketball.
You are an athlete.
That is your, was that your identity, your self -identity as an athlete?
Yeah, you get to Yale, you're Missy Park the basketball player.
Yes, the Southern basketball player when I get to Yale.
Yeah. And, and just to be clear, there were women's sports, right, at Yale.
They had been for a long time.
But the difference when you got there was Title IX, which had been, was passed in 1972, was in full effect, right?
And so what did that mean when you got to Yale in 1980 as a student athlete?
Well, I think a lot with my generation in particular, Guy, you know, yes, Title IX was past. Yes, the 70s had happened, but we were still in that place of everything that we gain is a loss for the guys on the other side of it, right?
That was the perspective that you as a woman athlete are taking away resources from me as a male athlete.
Exactly. And in some ways, yes, that was true.
It's like all of a sudden the men's basketball team doesn't have the pick of all of the basketball practice times.
They have to share them with the women's team.
Do those four years feel like there were battles?
Yeah, well, I think it also it goes to sort of the genesis of title nine.
The company is, you know, me and my teammates are getting uniforms that are hand me down men's uniforms. I remember my buddy, Regina Sullivan, she wore, I think like a size six and a half women's shoe, but they don't make women's shoes.
So she had to go to like the little kid's department at Macy's and buy some little boys' sneakers.
So the sense of having to create the traditions around a team, what it means to get success while at the same time fighting for the good practice times, marketing support in the community, those were battles being fought on two fronts for sure.
And as I said, the genesis of Title IX, I mean, I remember my buddies and I were all like, ah, when we graduate from college, we're gonna go get some experience.
And then we're gonna start the women's version of Nike.
Of course, they all went and got really good jobs.
you know yeah finance right sure finance Procter and Gamble Microsoft and I was the only one that actually ended up not getting one of those good jobs so I had to figure out something else to do all right you graduate in around 84 and from what I gather you wanted you decided that you would go into into coaching that maybe you would like explore becoming a professional coach of Right.
I was lucky enough, uh, to be offered a job at our arch rival at Harvard – and then I found it very difficult to coach against my former teammates and a job opened up at Yale the following year – but I think I realized at that point, that coaching a team was never gonna be the same thing as playing on a team.
I there's a book by David Epstein called The Sports Gene.
And he makes an analogy between a player and a coach and the analogy is, just because you're a bird, it doesn't mean you can be an ornithologist. And I think that's right.
Well, yeah. And I think that's right.
All right, so you realize that that that college or basketball coach coaching is not the right fit for you.
And it's the mid 80s you're from Greenville South Carolina.
You're living in New England What got you out to the West Coast?
What was it? I knew I didn't want to live in the south Okay, I knew I didn't want to be cold fair enough.
I knew I didn't have any money My brother lived in California so I Packed up my I had a Toyota pickup truck I packed up all of my worldly belongings And my parents had given me a tent for graduation from college because they knew exactly what I would want, right?
A tent. A tent, right?
That's what you have, right?
Like, who, what southern parents, I mean, like who would do that?
Right? But they knew I wanted a tent.
So, in those days, you had to seam seal the tent to seal up all the little needle holes, so it wouldn't leak.
And I'm unrolling the tent and I'm taking off the hang tag.
And I look at it says the north face, nine nine, nine Harrison street, Berkeley, California.
Wow. So I moved in with my brother.
Um, I'd also led some bike trips for kids.
So I really loved cycling and it's like, okay, I either want to work for a bike company or I want to work for the north face.
Yeah. So I started just walking into bike shops, asking them, you bike companies that were in California and how I might get a job.
And one of those bike shops I ran into a guy by the name of Michael Phillips who happened to be a sales rep for some old bike brand.
And he's like, you're looking for a job?
It's like, well, why don't you come ride with me in my van for a day while I call on customers I can teach you about the business.
Wow. Well, my brother had different ideas.
He was like, this guy is creepy.
Don't do it. Exactly.
So while that was going on, Michael, and then at the same time, I was kind of trying to find my way into the North Face.
And I had heard at the time that there was another young woman about my age that was leading up the equipment division at the North Face, a woman by the name of Sally McCoy, who was from Charlotte, North Carolina and had gone to Dartmouth and was a little bit older than I was.
So I was like, okay, she's the person I need to talk to.
But I can't get anybody.
You know, you're not emailing people.
Like maybe you write them a letter.
I don't know what you do.
Well, what I do is I find out 999 Harrison Street and I walk into the reception area and I'm like, I'd like to see Sally McCoy.
And they're like, well, do you have an appointment?
No, I don't, but well, she's busy.
I'm like okay, well, I'll just wait So I wait and I wait and I'm there pretty much all day.
Yeah, and Finally, this guy comes down the stairs that jump into the front Lobby and he's like, you know, you've been here a long time Is there anybody helping you?
I'm like well, no, I really want to talk to this woman Sally McCoy But she seems to be very busy he goes, well, well maybe I can help you.
This guy's name was Mark Erickson.
And he was I think the vice president of product?
I was super disappointed to be talking to him, but he ended up getting my foot in the door at the North Face and I ended up meeting Sally McCoy and a really interesting group of business women.
And that was really my first exposure to a real job.
I mean, it's interesting because you wanted to work for that company.
You were a student athlete and you were really passionate.
And one of your principles as, as a leader is hire for passion.
You can train people to do the business stuff.
Don't worry about skills or training like hire for passion, which I think is a thousand percent right.
Like people have to believe in the mission of what you're doing.
That's more important than anything else.
And then you can train them.
Well, I think that was it.
They had this thing that needed doing.
And it was very entrepreneurial.
You just had such a broad range of things that you could do.
I mean, they strongly believed in the, it's easier to be forgiven than to obtain permission rule.
Yeah. So it's a great and right, I honestly, I think about it, it was such a good ad.
So, the first job I got strangely enough was putting together a retail point of sale catalog for them so it's gonna be like a magazine that was gonna sit in their retail stores.
I mean, I don't have any skills.
I mean, literally zero skills.
There I am, I'm working with a graphic designer, I'm working with photographers, I'm going on photo shoots, I wrote copy for about product that I didn't really know anything about.
Fortunately, there was a lot of supervision.
I really wasn't doing all that.
But I was sort of the person, kind of making sure everything held together in the end.
And by the way, I think while you were at North Face, you met someone who worked there who would eventually become your life partner, your wife, right?
That's right, actually.
How I met her is, Sally had recommended that all of the managers, Sally McCoy, original woman I wanted to talk to, had recommended that all the managers take a look and see if they had any job openings.
And Dana, my wife, happened to have one.
So I actually interviewed with Dana for the job that she had that I really, really wanted, even though I was colossally unsuited for it.
So I did not get the job, but more importantly, I got the girl.
And the truth of the matter is that my buddy, Michael Phillips, who was not an ax murderer, but ended up being a very good man who mentored me, he actually hooked me up with Fisher mountain bikes.
And I applied for a job there.
I didn't get the job at Fisher mountain bikes, but my parents raised me right, and they told me to make sure to write thank -you notes, and the person they did hire ended up not working out.
And they called me and said, hey, the job's yours if you want it.
So I went to work at Fisher, which was one of the first, if not the first, mountain bike company.
Yeah, I think it was, Gary Fisher, right?
Yes! I mean, these are pioneers of like outdoor gear, mountain biking.
And I got to work with them and I'm like 26.
And I think good job experience is wasted on the young.
That's what I think my short version is that.
So I went to work at Fisher in inside sales and that was me calling on bike shops.
But suffice it to say most bike shop guys were not used to having a woman calling them on the phone.
So I mean, you must have really stood out.
I mean, here we are talking in 2021.
You've been in California since 1985.
And I mean, your accent sticks out right.
I mean, but you really rarely run into people in Berkeley with a South Carolina accent.
No, I know. Yeah, I think I stuck out for good or ill.
and you were... From what I read, I think your brother lived across the bay south of the airport in Foster City.
Eventually, presumably you moved to Berkeley because you were working for...
you worked for Fisher and for Northace.
Yes I had a job with a paycheck, so I could afford to have a room and a house.
When you were a student -athlete, right, you imagine were already thinking about the fact that the clothing made for women athletes was not well thought out.
While you were working at North Case, you were, from what I have read, like you were thinking about this like problem that there was there was no good athletic gear for women.
Yeah. You know, guy, it's funny because here's the thing I think about a lot.
I mean I I'm assuming you know about the narrative fallacy, right?
Like this idea that we end up at a certain place and then we make up this really nice story that proceeds logically from point A to point Z.
And it's just a lie.
So I want to tell all this to you but it's going to be completely misleading, like, oh, and then I went to Yale where I found ill -fitting uniforms and then I went to the North Face and was frustrated, but no, I was just, and I guess I think, I used to think, to use an old school analogy, I used to think I was the person operating the flippers on the pinball machine.
I'm the ball. I think that's, so, I'm having all of these experiences, You were bouncing around.
Right, I'm just bouncing around, 500 points, free ball, yay, okay, I'm gonna play, I'm gonna keep playing.
So I wanna make sure like that part of it is clear.
I mean, I am not four -sided enough to have planned what happened to me.
And just to be clear almost nobody who's been on the show is.
I can't think of a single story where somebody said, you know, I was 18, I had this vision now I'm 55.
And it kind of unfolds over time and it's like being the ball in the pinball machine.
Yes, exactly. Um, and I think that's it, you know, so I can look back and I can see the thread, like I can look back on my time as a kid.
You know, I'm like eight or nine or 10 years old, and at the time there was basically one sports magazine, Sports Illustrated.
And I would go through every single one of them and try and find pictures of women athletes.
And I would painstakingly cut them out and put them on a poster board and have it up my room.
So you could say like it was already in me then I wasn't thinking like and therefore I am going to start a women's athletic apparel company.
But the seeds were there early trying to create a vision of what I could be.
What was women's sportswear in in the 80s?
I I mean, Jane Fonda it's kind of that kind of stuff.
I mean, I think about, you know, for me, when you play college sports, you get all your gear given to you ill -fitting or not, it's given to you.
It's given to you. They wash it for you.
If it wears out, you get a new one.
It's not your concern.
Then I graduate from college and all of a sudden I'm having to buy my own gear and there's There's nowhere to find anything that's built or designed specifically women.
That, you know, there's no Lululemons.
There's no, there's, there's nothing.
Literally there is nothing.
And really, I mean, if you think about it, it's just math, right?
Um, title nine was passed in 72.
So I was in that first generation.
There was no market.
What was it that, I mean you're 27, and you decide at that age to start your own business, were you frustrated working in for a bigger company?
Did you - were you just one of these people who had to be your own boss?
What do you remember about that time in your life that led you to to that decision?
I would say probably that you know, I think about the North Face.
Now I had great jobs.
But I'm 26, and I'm like, boy, these guys are kinda idiots.
If they can run these businesses, then anybody can do it.
You know, cuz I'm 26.
And I know everything.
Of course you do. You know?
So it was frustration.
They wouldn't do everything that I wanted them to do.
They probably aren't even paying any attention to me.
I'm like some entry -level person.
They don't, you know, they're busy.
They've actually got important decisions to make where I'm down here seeing how idiotic everything is.
So I'm so confident, right?
I remember that feeling.
Yeah. And I think my favorite part about it is just like, and now, guy, I'm the idiot.
But you know what? Here's the thing, because we're both talking, we're both older and we're talking about remembering that feeling.
And if you are listening and you are 26, it's okay to think that I'm an idiot or Missy's an idiot because that's the fuel you need to do something stupid enough to start a business that will ultimately be a good decision.
Right? I mean, those are very like, people say, Oh, how did you do that when you were 26?
And I have to say, it's the only time to do it.
Yeah. And this is 1989.
I think when you decide to start the business, and what What did you tell yourself?
Did you say, you know, I'm gonna start a women's apparel company, cause it's always been on my mind, like what, how did you describe it to people?
And he says, so what are you gonna do now Missy?
Well, first I did zero market research. My market research was me and my friends, which let's just be very clear is a very small group.
You just said, hey, would you use this?
Yeah. Hey, you need shorts that fit women, don't you?
Yeah, me too. Yeah.
Um, but I had enough to say, okay, there's not enough people in Berkeley, California to support a retail store just for women athletes.
So I need to do something that's more national, so I can find all the women who need workout and fitness gear.
So I did sort of what is the precursor to the internet is that was a mail order catalog.
Did you have, I mean, let's just back up for a second, what kind of money did you have to start an apparel company?
Presumably you had some savings from your job.
Yes I did. Exactly.
I had like 30 ,000 bucks.
I can tell you. That's pretty good.
Yeah. I mean, I had 30 ,000 bucks.
That's a nice amount of cash, yeah.
Yeah okay but what people were telling me is you know this time right this is 1989 and I'm talking to as many people as I could possibly talk to.
I'm calling anybody that will talk to me on the phone.
Asking them what? Uh hey I've decided I want to start a mail -order catalogue you have started one and all of them told me if you're gonna do this you need at least a half a million dollars.
To start a mail -order catalogue business because this was 89 this is how You marketed, you sent out millions of catalogs, and then hopefully people would...
Or not millions, Guy, or not millions.
Or not, okay. So people said, you need at least a half a million bucks to make this work.
Yep. That's intimidating.
Yeah, yeah. I was like well, I don't have a half a million dollars, I have $30 ,000 so I call up my dad.
So Dad, I'm super excited, Because I've got an idea for a business and the best part about it is that no one else is doing it.
And he's quiet for a second and he said, there might be a good reason for that, Missy.
When we come back in just a moment, how Missy struggles for months and then years to get Title IX going, and how she discovers the one item of clothing that will give the business a much needed boost. Stay with us, I'm Guy Raz, and you're listening to How I Built This.
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If you've been a longtime listener to How I Built This, you might remember the very first episode we aired back in 2016.
I sat down with Sarah Blakely, the founder of Spanx, and we explored her journey from selling fax machines to starting her own company that's now valued at over $700 million.
dollars. When Spanx launched in the early 2000s, it revolutionized the fashion industry by creating an entirely new category of clothing, shapewear.
Then, in 2019, Kim Kardashian launched her own shapewear company, Skims. She may have had fame and fortune on her side, but going up against an established titan like Spanx was no safe bet.
The newest season of Business Wars dives into this fascinating rivalry.
This is a story about what it takes to launch a product, and how far...
