Glen Barad was in a product development meeting in early January at Taos’ offices in Gardena, CA. It was a typical Tuesday, and the team was going over its latest collection with a fine-tooth comb as it has for 20 years, making sure the fit, quality, colors, materials—every detail of every style—met the brand’s standards. That’s Taos being Taos. It’s about the product first and foremost.
In the midst of this meeting, Barad’s wife called. He silenced the ring, figuring it could wait. She called again immediately. Then she texted a photo of their backyard in Pacific Palisades, with a menacing plume of smoke rising above the hillside. The wildfires were that close.
“My wife, daughter, and her boyfriend were there,” Barad says. “So I jumped in my car and started racing home.”
Barad made it to a Vons supermarket parking lot just off the Pacific Coast Highway a couple of miles from his home of 25 years in Pacific Palisades. The road leading up the hill to his cul-de-sac was blocked. Undaunted, he started walking home when, about 20 minutes later, he happened upon his family standing on a patch of grass between town homes and a strip center at the base of that road. They had pulled over amid traffic gridlock as people abandoned their cars as fires, fueled by 60 mph-plus winds, raged on both sides. Inside the Barads’ two cars were two cats in carriers, two dogs, and whatever they had thought to grab. A dire situation was in danger of turning deadly as a palm tree in the center divide right next to them caught fire. The family carried everything to Barad’s car and fled to a hotel. They didn’t know if they’d ever see their home again.
Barad’s family was one of the luckier ones. The home is still standing, but it suffered severe damage as the intense heat of the fires blew out the back windows. The yard is cooked, too. Neighbors on the lower cul-de-sacs of their hill were not as fortunate. Their homes were destroyed. Barad’s eldest son lost his nearby childhood home. So did many close friends and acquaintances of the Barads. “The devastation is astounding,” he says, noting that the town looks like a checkerboard where a few houses are mostly unscathed while many others are burnt to the ground. “There’s no rhyme or reason to it.”
What was expected to be a night or two at that hotel turned into a 26-days in two rooms for the Barads and their pets. He and his wife, Cyndi, have since moved into a rental in Hermosa Beach where they’ve been slowly bringing some normalcy back into their lives. It will be well over a year before they can return home. The Barads are just one of approximately 10,000 families who’ve been displaced for however long it takes to rebuild. While everyone’s situation is different, they have common traits. “We’re all nomads now, and we all have lots of work to do to get our community back to where it once was,” he says. “It’s going to be part of our daily lives until we make that happen. We will.” Of course, it could have been much worse. “My family and our pets are safe, and that’s all that matters,” Barad adds. “And none of our employees were directly affected, which has been a great relief, too.”
Somehow through all this chaos Barad has managed to stay focused on his day job. He credits his leadership team of Bill Langrell, president and COO; Sylvia Jensen, vice president of domestic sales; Mike Walker, vice president and director of marketing; CFO Oscar Campos; Teresa Johnson, sales and marketing specialist; Erica Heck, director of product development; and Deepak Alag, director of operations, for making it possible. Credit also goes to every employee who stayed the course amid the turbulence. The fact is, it’s a very busy time for Taos. Not only is the company marking its 20th anniversary, it also recently announced its first-ever investment deal with Prospect Capital Corporation (Prospect), which will provide the necessary funds to reach next-level growth. Taos is already coming off its best year ever and expects to top it in 2025. The future is bright.
Barad foresaw this growth potential during the Covid hangover. The brand had done well those years but could have done much better, he says. For starters, its product “performed fabulously.” Second, the company stuck to its MAP pricing when many brands didn’t. Barad sensed Taos could be rewarded with increased orders once retailer inventories normalized. “A lot of our retailers had no room in their stores and warehouses, or they were maxed out on cash flow and couldn’t buy anything more from us,” he says. “That was so frustrating to hear. But I realized it wasn’t an us thing; it was an industry thing. I saw an opportunity for big growth in the future.”
Enter Prospect to help invest in that growth. Barad says the investment firm is a perfect match. “Their mentality is to let us run our business our way. They don’t want to change that,” he explains. “They’re helping us with structure, strategy, and any financial needs that might arise.”
Taos had its share of investment suitors, but Barad feels Prospect and Taos chose each other after an 18-month courtship. That bodes well for the relationship going forward, he says. “Many companies look for investment when things are going south,” the exec explains. By contrast, “Our numbers are good, and everything is going in the right direction. We don’t need major restructuring or changes in direction. This investment agreement is the best thing for the brand and our company right now. It’s a very exciting time.”
After 20 years with Taos, Barad remains as committed to building the brand as he was on day one. He’s proud of the company that he and his team have built from the ground up. He’s especially proud that Taos has never wavered from its product-first principles and steadfast belief in the power of independent brick-and-mortar retailers to drive growth. The journey has involved “plenty of blood, sweat, and tears,” and Barad appreciates what it took to get here. Back when he launched Taos, he had no idea of the journey he was embarking on. “We didn’t think about that. Maybe that’s because we were such bad planners that we didn’t know what we were planning for,” he says with a laugh. “But here we are 20 years later and still in the game. As long as we’re good at what we do and still having fun, we’ll keep playing.”
So how are you holding up?
All things considered, ok enough. I’m getting my wits about living in our new rental in Hermosa Beach and figuring out what’s supposed to go where. I’ve also been meeting with insurance appraisers to go through all those protocols. That part of our lives has been tricky. For example, we’d been dropped by State Farm in August for fire insurance but fortunately we got insurance under the California Fair Plan. It’s not great, but it’s at least something. Others didn’t have any fire insurance. That’s awful. Thankfully, the entire Southern California community has been helping. We attended a recent event at a home in nearby South Bay for displaced Palisadians. It was a chance for us to meet, eat, and commiserate while the host provided a list of area restaurants, doctors, physical therapists, dog washers, etc. that we might need. The mayor of Manhattan Beach also welcomed us. The outpouring of support means a lot.
How is Taos holding up?
Very well, thankfully! Things are pretty much back to normal. In fact, our team worked straight through, which wasn’t easy when our staff was fearful that they could lose their homes or knew someone who did. Big credit goes to them for doing their jobs, which I’m grateful for.
What can Taos do now and more of with the Prospect funding?
First is focusing on our core business and get that going at full potential. Secondly, a lot more marketing. Over the last 20 years, Taos has grown steadily despite little to no marketing. It’s been mainly word-of-mouth and grassroots, which somehow still has driven many consumers into our retail partners asking for the brand. That’s pretty impressive. But we believe that if we increase our marketing efforts that investment will more than pay off. Prospect will also enable us to be better operators from a structural standpoint and to make sure whatever capital we might need in any facet of the company, at whatever time, will be available to us. Lastly, we’re able to analyze and plan better, which we never really did much of before. Before, everything was sort of shot from the hip. Now we’re set up well for growth opportunities going forward. We’re still Taos, but just a little more buttoned up on business matters.
This must all be liberating, no?
Absolutely. We can do whatever we want as long as it’s with integrity and it’s about building the brand, helping our retailers, and making our consumers happy.
What do you attribute last year’s record sales to most?
Great product, for starters. We have a mantra to be understandably fresh. For example, we don’t need an entire new collection every season. Instead, we’re smart about deciding what core items we take forward while being understandably fresh. We hit hard on those core items that ring the register. Of late, we’ve had a lot of hot items. We’ve also never been deal-y. Many vendors will offer the deal, which is usually a heavy discount, longer terms to pay, etc. During Covid that approach was especially popular, and there was a lot of market share that we might not have gotten because we refused to be as deal-y. More recently, though, retailers have been shifting their focus back to the product and not the deal, which has benefitted us. We’ve always been about product, product, product. The reality is we’re not selling a deal to consumers; we’re selling a great product.
Any other reasons fueling the record growth?
Our distribution, which is primarily independent brick-and-mortar retail. That’s our number one focus. We made the choice from the beginning to support that tier, and we still believe that’s the right approach. It’s paid enormous dividends. On that note, business is really made up of a series of choices. Do you choose to offer a deal or focus on making great product? Same goes for the choice of who you sell to. Our customers, by and large, are just really good merchants who know how to buy, turn, and fill in. And we’re grabbing more market share in these better retailers. What’s more, many of these retailers have been growing their overall store counts through acquisitions. That has contributed to our record sales of late, as well.
Might this consolidation make it more challenging to grow going forward?
There’s still plenty of market share up for grabs. As long as our product is great, we expand our marketing message, and continue to focus on better grade retailers, I think things will work out well for us. Now I can’t speak for other brands and I confess that when I walk into a show and see just how many vendors are there, I ask myself: How is this all supported? Some of it just seems so farfetched. Whereas we’ve approached this business completely different than many other brands. That includes our product-first focus, grassroots marketing, and our team. I’ll compare our team to any in the industry and then some. We didn’t have all the tools early on, yet we still competed with billion-dollar companies. We found a way. And now with these tools, thanks to our investment deal, we’ll be able to compete a heck of a lot better, so long as the product is there.
A lot of brands go the deal, gimmick, or knockoff route because making great product is hard, right?
It is hard. It requires consistency as well as knowing all the details that go into making a great shoe. Personally, it’s 40 years of sourcing and selling knowhow. You learn a thing or two over that time. Of course, we’ve had some misses. Nobody’s perfect. It’s like baseball, where you can go into a slump. But because we’ve treated our retailers fairly—like keeping our distribution clean, being product first, and not about the deal—we’ve had opportunities to work out of any slumps. Our track record shows that we hit it out of the park regularly.
Is this the harder road to success?
Yes. We could have gone with a completely different business model—that’s my background with Dynasty Footwear. It’s easier, plus you don’t have to carry inventory. But that’s not what Taos is about. I chose a different road, and I understand that our entrepreneurial approach has risks, but that’s also the invigorating part. No risk, no reward, right? We believe in ourselves enough to be able to take the risks, trust our retail partners, and for them to trust us. If we don’t believe in something, we won’t just make a deal so that our gross sales look better for the year, because that’ll negatively hit our balance sheet eventually. That approach usually doesn’t end well. For argument’s sake, it’s easier to be a $100 million company and lose money than to be a $10 million company and make money. Long-term success is about how you manage the business.
Has it ever been easy?
No, especially the past few years. Look, this isn’t an easy industry. But we’ve evolved and overcome many challenges along the way, like the Financial Crisis of 2008, retail consolidation, the pandemic…you name it, we’re still taking our cuts. We just booked our best year and expect 2025 to top it amid what has been a very difficult environment with high inflation, a divisive election, and now increased tariffs. The environment is tough, but we feel like we have slowing tailwinds and not headwinds against us right now. It’s similar to Hoka, On, Brooks, Birkenstock, Ugg, Skechers, and New Balance—brands that are all doing well despite the challenges. There’s business to be had if you understand who you are as a brand and don’t try to be everything to everybody. That’s why product, planning, and message are so important. Passion is also important. We’re passionate about this business. We love it. We live it. So, yes, this is the hard road to success. But if it were easy, then everyone would do it.
Agreed.
We’ve gone through different chapters to reach this point, and we have many more chapters to write. The first chapter was just trying to get into the branded business without deep pockets. We found a way to do that. But you can only plan the journey so far out. There are too many twists and hurdles that you can’t foresee. But we’ve found ways to overcome those, too. Also, if we just think about what’s in it for Taos, then we’ll lose. It’s about what can Taos do for our consumer that maybe she hasn’t had before. And what can we do for our retailers in terms of creating unique and great product, or the fact that they can just trust us. That, for example, our distribution is really tight. Our retailers don’t have to worry about us being all over the place. Or just the fact that we have phenomenal people who connect with them along with a tremendous customer service team. That’s our legacy: Taos is consumer- and retail-facing versus it being about us first. If we continue with this approach, I believe our team will win.
How is Taos responding to the increased tariffs?
It’s affecting everybody in the industry to some extent. We’re all on the same playing field. Fortunately, we’re very diversified in our sourcing. We have one factory left in China, and they do a great job. We’re planning on staying with them. They’re also building factories in other countries. They’re well financed and managed, so I think we’ll be ok there. Our other factory partners are in Vietnam, Spain, and Portugal. We’re also going to play around in India a little bit and see how that goes. But the new administration is threatening tariffs in a lot of countries. He just like to stir the pot. We’ll see what happens. The one thing we won’t do is make rash decisions. Because, for example, staying in China might still be the best alternative versus moving to a factory in another country only to discover that the quality isn’t as good and there are other costs. It goes back to: Are we buying the deal or the product? Diversity is a strength. Product is a strength. A good factory is a strength. Chasing the cheapest deal isn’t a strength.
Might Taos expand into men’s styles?
There’s still so much room to grow where we are today, but I think men’s is getting closer every day. We just have to make sure our sourcing is aligned with our needs. What factories are best and are we doing it for the right reasons. That’s the backroom stuff that needs to be done first so when the curtain opens the performance goes off without a hitch. It’s the same for when a consumer opens one of our boxes, they don’t realize everything that went into making that product other than they want it to look and feel great. That’s our ultimate goal: happy consumers. Sometimes it takes longer to identify or understand what works. But our numbers don’t lie. The report cards in most of retail partners are exceptional. And while we’re still far from superstar status in comparison to some behemoths, we can become one. We just have to continue doing what we’ve been doing, only now on a grander scale and backed by more marketing. If, after 20 years, we’re still endearing to our retail partners, it means we must be doing something right. That. Feels. Good.
What’s your take on the general state of retail?
Everyone is searching for what’s next. So, for example, Vans Old Skool styles were the hottest shoe for a couple of years and then that hit a wall. Then Adidas came in with the Samba, and Hoka and On have also been hot. My take is that athletic has always been hot. What’s changed is the distribution channels. For example, better independents used to only carry New Balance but now that there are a lot fewer sporting goods dealers, they’re also carrying Brooks, Hoka, On, and Asics, to cite a few. That’s new growth for them. Same for the work boot business. When Payless, Kmart, and Sears closed, along with a Walmart cutting way back on its work boots offering, that’s 20,000 stores, give or a take a few, that used to sell that category. That’s another huge growth opportunity for better independents. Boot Barn has done well amid this shift, too. Getting back to Taos, we’re trying new categories, like active outdoor. It’s all a learning process. I call them correctibles: What can we do differently to make this category a little better? Meanwhile, we continue to update many core styles that drive our business.
What do you love most about your job?
I just love this industry. I love that I know people in just about every state and from around the world, be it sourcing, distribution, and retail. We work with a beautiful group of people. This morning , for example, I spoke with our factory partners in Spain and Portugal. Tomorrow, representatives from one of our Vietnamese factories are in town. At shows, I meet with our retailers, many of whom have been partners for more than a decade. I also love catching up with retailers who may not be customers now, but it’s always good to touch base because you never know when an opportunity to do something may arise. Also, many buyers are a lot younger than me now, and I love hearing their perspectives. I’m always learning. Similarly, if I can share anything that I’ve learned, it’s my pleasure. Lastly, I love interacting with our great competitors. At the end of the day, we’re all in this together.
