Not every brand explodes. Some rise slowly, and win big.
In this episode, Jason talks with Nicholas Karrat, CMO of StockX, about the Soul & Science of marketplace models—and what it takes to build brand trust, cultural relevance, and business performance at the same time. A veteran marketer with experience across Fortune 100 companies and DTC startups, Nick has held leadership roles at AT&T, Citibank, Plated, Boll & Branch, and Tommy John. Now at the helm of marketing for StockX, he’s focused on staying true to the brand’s core while expanding its reach.
Key Takeaways:
✅ Every channel is both brand and performance—the only difference is timing.
✅ Scarcity still drives urgency, but discovery starts earlier than ever.
✅ Trust and authentic storytelling beat polish when you’re building for the culture.
✅ For trend-driven products, TikTok fuels demand in real time.
✅ Great CMOs trust their instincts and adapt with the people on their team.
Memorable Moments:
💡 “Everything we do is brand and everything we do is performance, whether you like it or not.”
💡 “Now you know” isn’t just a tagline. It’s how culture spreads.
💡 “People and vision beat category and paycheck. Every time.”
Brought to you by Mekanism.
In this episode, Jason talks with Nicholas Karrat, CMO of StockX, about the Soul & Science of marketplace models—and what it takes to build brand trust, cultural relevance, and business performance at the same time. A veteran marketer with experience across Fortune 100 companies and DTC startups, Nick has held leadership roles at AT&T, Citibank, Plated, Boll & Branch, and Tommy John. Now at the helm of marketing for StockX, he’s focused on staying true to the brand’s core while expanding its reach.
Key Takeaways:
✅ Every channel is both brand and performance—the only difference is timing.
✅ Scarcity still drives urgency, but discovery starts earlier than ever.
✅ Trust and authentic storytelling beat polish when you’re building for the culture.
✅ For trend-driven products, TikTok fuels demand in real time.
✅ Great CMOs trust their instincts and adapt with the people on their team.
Memorable Moments:
💡 “Everything we do is brand and everything we do is performance, whether you like it or not.”
💡 “Now you know” isn’t just a tagline. It’s how culture spreads.
💡 “People and vision beat category and paycheck. Every time.”
Brought to you by Mekanism.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Everything we do is brand, and everything we do is performance,
whether you like it or not. So all we're debating
is the window of action. Performance dollars is like sales today,
and brand dollars is still some sort of KPI tomorrow.
It all drives people to.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Action in today's world. How does a brand break through
the noise and become iconic? Join me Jason Harris as
I speak with the world's leading marketing experts about how
they use sole and science to build an iconic brand.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Think of it as EQ meeting IQ.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
So let's lock in and together fast forward our marketing
minds on the Soul and Science Podcast. Welcome to the
Sole and Science Podcast. Today's episode is all about the
soul and science of marketplace models. We're talking with Nick Carrot,
CMO of StockX, and we're going to dig in and
(00:58):
find out about the business of connecting buyers and sellers.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Welcome to the show, Nick, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Jason.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
All right, Nick, I always start with this question, how
you got into the marketing path? Did you fall into it?
Did you study it? Did you grow up as a
young child saying you wanted to be a CMO? How
did you get to where you are now.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, I wish it was linear and only up to
the right, but that's not the case for me, as
it is for probably many others you talked to. So, yeah,
I came out of high school looking to get a
college degree. I thought I was going to play some
sports and wasn't able to. I was good at math
and science, so met with my guidance counselor who said, hey,
you should be a math or an engineering major. So
(01:46):
came out of college with a four year mathematics degree,
programmed in for computer science languages. So took a job
out of college programming. I was a developer, hoodie on
headset on coding away, and I was terrible at it.
I hated it. So I was a developer for about
six months at AT and T right out of college.
(02:08):
The beauty of a big company is that there's so
much opportunity for you to move laterally if you're not
digging what you're doing. So about six months in I
was hanging out a lot after work. I played basketball,
went down to the beach house. So I was hanging
out with a bunch of other new folks at AT
and T, and my group ended up being in the advertising.
(02:29):
We called it Markup Group. So I was spending a
lot of time over there. One of my contacts said, Hey,
don't tell anyone. We're about to bring in Whitney Houston.
We're going to run a national TV campaign. Like that's amazing,
you know, Can I meet her? And they were like, no, sorry,
it doesn't work that way. But what you can do
is come on, teach us what you do. Teach us
(02:49):
how you can add value to the advertising channel and
our investment here. So essentially six months into AT and T,
I wrote what was essentially a attribution. They taught me
about TV advertising, pre logs, post logs. I didn't know
how TV worked. They said, hey, when we run this
TV commercial, could you identify where and when phone calls
(03:11):
spike or when they go down, and you could sort
of help us justify this investment. It's like, I'm down.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
AT and T is a massive org. You would think
they'd have a million people doing that. Why did they
Why did they picked the boogie with the hoodie to
do that?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, So this is the nineties, right during the mad
Men era. So the marketing leadership team and I was
like eight down on the ORG chart to the CMO.
The marketing group back then were salespeople later on the
quant side, but incredibly articulate, so obviously investing tens of
millions of dollars into building the brand, and they wanted
to justify you know, it's a bad word today, but
(03:47):
return on AdSpend back then, they wanted to justify it.
So I literally talked my way into the ORG.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
They're like that guy is he knows computers, and he
knows numbers, and he seems smart. To have him figure
out the attribution model.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Exactly right, exactly right. Yeah, after six months of doing
something I hated, I talked my way over to the
other side, got into advertising and marketing. Spent eight years
at AT and T. I had a technical degree. They
paid for my MBA in marketing, and then you know,
the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
What was the best job you had while you were there?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
The best job that I had the last two years
I was. I was running a partnership marketing program. Really
going to date myself. We actually had prepaid ad cards.
So back in the day before most devices, if you
were traveling, you had a prepaid telephone card. They were
a commodity. Didn't matter whether you had at and T
or a competitor, but what we had done people started
(04:48):
to treat them almost like collectible baseball cards. So we
did a partnership with the NBA and we had players
on the prepaid phone cards. So that was sort of
my first entrance into the collectible market. A lot of
people were buying these cards because they had a player
on them. They weren't actually scratching the back or using
the card, so it became a high revenue stream for us.
With a ton of breakage in the industry, people weren't
(05:10):
using them so far and away the most exciting piece.
Privileged to work at AT and T for you great
cmos and huge agencies. It was almost like going back
to business school. The day to day work wasn't nearly
as exciting, but when you get to work with brands
like the NBA, that was super rewarding.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Oh it's amazing. And then where'd you go next? After
AT and T?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
After AT and T went to one other blue chip
So Citybank was building the E business Center of Excellence.
With the emerging of the Internet, they were trying to shift.
The headline was they wanted to get credit card applications
from old school prints into the Internet, so I built
that out. It was right about the time my first
child was born, so Sophia was born. We were looking
(05:55):
for a work life balance. So I was like, yeah,
I could do this for a year. It became two years,
four years. So I always had the itch to go
small and entrepreneurial, but I spent four years a City Group. Again,
had the privilege to work with great folks. It was
actually during the time and you'll love this because of
your agency background back in two thousand, I believe it
(06:16):
was we'd worked with City Group. We brought in. We
had worked with Fallon, the agency out of Minneapolis, so
they came in, they did some research. I'll never forget
it was such a hard hitting feedback they had given us.
But the headline of the pitch was, look, you know,
the dot com boom just happened. People don't trust banks.
The bad news is they don't trust City Bank more
(06:37):
than anyone else. So we're They pitched us essentially this
anti banks sentiment. It's not about you know, the most
the size of your yacht, it's not about aprs. It's
about the quality of life. So they're like, you're missing it.
All banks are missing it. People don't want to be rich,
they want to live richly. So that was the moment.
I had studied advertising in college, we had around campaigns.
(07:01):
That was one of the most like emotional moments for me,
and I saw what an ad campaign could do for,
you know, a traditional kind of sleepy brand like City Group,
and it was powerful. I got to meet actually several
folks at Fallon, the brand strategists, the chief creative officer,
and those relationships are still with me to today. So
many of those relationships I brought those folks, you know
(07:23):
how the process goes. They hung up their own shingles.
They still some of them in state at Minneapolis. So
I brought those brand strategists, those creatives, those copywriters with
me throughout my journey.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Fast forwarding a little bit, tell me about balling Branch.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, so it's all about relationships, right, Jason, Like, that's
how you and I are here today. We've met a
few times, we gave this close to working together and
we always stayed in touch and I admired your work.
So yeah, I knew after that, you know what, twelve
thirteen year run at Blue Chips, like disruptive founder led
companies was my thing. That's what I love doing. It's
what I was passionate about. So my oldest daughter that
(08:01):
I talked about played club soccer live out in Summit,
New Jersey. Here that's out my window. Was at a
game and our town has a bunch of Wall Street
finance types and there was like me and a T
shirt and another guy in a T shirt. They're like, hey,
you're a startup guy, right, I'm like, yeah, that's me.
They're like that guy down there sells sheets. So my
daughter was a My daughter was a center back. She
(08:24):
was a left center back, and the daughter of the
Blow and Ranch founders was a right center back. I
went down and introduced myself. We had stayed in touch
for years. We were always swapping advice back and forth.
Hey what are you seeing on you know, Facebook? CPMs
are up? Did you ever work with you know, Jason
and Mechanism. Yeah, he's a great guy. You should engage
with him. We were always swapping advice for years, and
(08:45):
then he had an opening and he was like, Hey,
I need I need a CMO. There's a bunch of
inbound interest for this company. I'm going to hire a
bank and see if there's any potential transaction that could
happen with the business. So I joined him. So we
were friends for three years, joined him as one of
his first cmos, and he allowed me one of the
(09:06):
biggest benefits out of that job. He allowed me to
ride shuck gun with him on the transaction of his company,
which ultimately had a recapitalization or transaction with el Cadterton,
the biggest consumer private equity company in the world. Like
husband and wife, founder, the greatest people killer brand, and
(09:27):
a remarkable opportunity. One of the highlights of my career.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I love that El Cadjan's good. El Cataden really rarely misses.
And then obviously you worked at Tommy John for almost.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Five years, right, yep, five years.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Tell me about that journey.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, every journey is unique, right. So I always preach
like the beginner's mindset, Like you know, leave your playbook
at home. We don't need a playbook. We need curiosity
and conviction. Right, come in here, understand the space, talk
to people, talk to the experts, and then formulating an opinion. Uh,
it's around the way I got the job. There's there's
(10:05):
a bunch of businesses in the Northeast. Bunch of startups.
Many of them get on the venture capitalists like train,
they raise money and they sprint. Bawlin, Branch and Tommy John,
the founders were actually friends. I did not know the
founders of Tommy John. They were part of the cohort
that were, for lack of a better word, they were
anti VC. They were like profitable growth reeput. You sew
(10:29):
profitable on first customer acquisition, and we're going to build
a profitable business day one. Super admirable. Both built extraordinary
brands and they did it the hard way, and I
would say the right way. But the downside of that,
in general on pro VC, the downside of that is
without being part of a portfolio private equity venture portfolio,
(10:50):
you don't have sister companies to talk to. So there's
a bunch of these relationships that happened. And Tommy John
founders and Ball and Branch founders were actually friends, and
without having sister companies, because they never took investment dollars,
they were always talking to each other.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Oh that's cool, I got you.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
So they were sort of like strategic advisors for each other.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
And then that's what we got in. That's really cool.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, And if you'll see a lot of the similar
agencies worked at both a lot of similar and it
was because of the founders were sharing stories.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Just real quick, the question do you believe in running
a business from the fundamentals of building profitability and or
do you believe that you should take money and grow
as fast as you can?
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yeah? Good question and the answer is nuanced right, So always, always, always,
if you could grow profitably, like generate income on your
first customer acquisition, build your brand alongside that, that's the dream,
that's the ideal. Look, there's some scenarios where you're in
a dogfight right your brand, you're on the clock. There's
(11:57):
a land grab moment. You have to gain mind share
and market share at the same time. In those moments,
in those categories, it's irresponsible not to take money, right
because what VC dollars. With the right partner, whether it's
private equity or VC, the right partner will work alongside you.
They'll make your business that much better and they'll allow
you to move faster. And I think you have to realize,
(12:20):
like it's not a one size fit all and as
a founder, you need to realize, like, do we have
a unique product, is this defendable and for how long?
And if you're running out of time to gain market share,
like you better get a partner, and you better take
some money off the table, and you better invest in
your brand. So I know it's not a complete answer
for you, but it depends on the situation.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
You need the right partner to propel your brand because
you're going to have barbarians at the gate, and you
got to get there as fast as you can.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And you never have as much runway as you think
you have. You never have it. Someone's watching you. And
this day and age, it's so easy to replicate. I
could be like Jason's going to build my brand. I
got three growth hacks. I'm going to rip off your
growth stack. I could do everything you're doing right within
within weeks. So it's a dangerous time. It's a cool
time to launch a brand, it's a dangerous time to
(13:09):
build a brand. You just got to be smart and
aggressive about it.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
All right.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And that leads us to your current job as CMO
of stock X, which when you got that job, there's
a few jobs that I'm jealous of. That was one
of them. I was like, God, I would take that job.
That job sounds amazing because I am I know, your
demographics younger than me, but I am I'm on the
(13:34):
older fringes, but I am a hardcore stock x user.
I love the brand and it always is delivered for me.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Foremost, I appreciate you being a customer. We value any feedback,
so maybe after this call you can give me some
We appreciate it. On the personal side, I felt the
same way as you. You know, you get a lot
of inbound calls, at least if you're on the brand
side and you work with great brands like Tommy Johner,
Bowmen Branch, you get a ton of inbound calls because
of the drength of the brand you worked with. When
stock x came in, I felt the same way you felt,
(14:04):
and all of I'm a New Yorker, all my New
York friends felt the same way I felt. So yeah.
For me personally, I grew up in outside of Syracuse,
in a small town. I lived through like the eighties
and nineties, like Big eiaest basketball, like that timeframe, and
I joked that I'm the only person at stock x
who actually wore Jordan Ones on a court late in
(14:25):
the eighties. So this this company, this product that was
a customer of it. It just spoke to me and
it was an incredible, incredible opportunity. So it was you
flattered when they called me, reached out, met with Greg
the founder. We just hit it off and I was like, yeah,
I would love to work here if there's a match.
Both ways.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I'm sure most most listeners know stock X, but either way,
if some don't explain stock X to me, like I'm
your grandma.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
So yeah, so stock X in formal terms, we're the
current culture marketplace, right so what that means in layman's terms,
we're known for the last ten years, we're known for
our core category, which is sneakers. So think of it
when there's a drop, whether you're into Jordan's or on
Cloud or any other sneaker. When there's a drop and
it sells out and you don't get it, well, there's
(15:16):
a marketplace, a peer to peer marketplace where you can
get what you miss out on, and that place is
stock X. So our core started out as sneakers, but
we're so much more than that right now. We've got apparel, accessories, collectibles,
so anything that is coveted, the things that you love
in life that sometimes you miss out on everything you
want or need is here at stock X. So that's
(15:40):
really what the brand is about. And to humanize it
a little bit more like there's a big, big cultural
movement around individualism and signaling sort of like who you are,
Like you and I are New Yorkers. Like when I
see someone in New York, I the privilege of working
on Lafayette Street in New York. When I see someone
rocking like a kiss Nick's, Jack Kid and Jordan One's
(16:02):
and they've got that basketball vibe about him, like that's
that's a New Yorker And you could tell immediately like
that person's one of my people, right New York and nowhere, Yeah,
exactly right.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
But I've got a.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Good friend who actually got into soccer later in life
because of my daughter and my son who played it.
But I got a good friend from Barcelona who lives
in South Beach, and I love South Beach Like I'm
not from there, but I love it.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
I go down there.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
He's rocking like the first Sambas. He's got the Miami
Vice Inter Miami Soccer kit, like man head to toe.
This guy's just tight. He looks good. He looks apart,
like that's not me, but that's his tribe and he
signals it, and I always go back to stock X.
It's the only it's the only site. It's the only
marketplace that reflects each of our closets, right, because none
(16:48):
of us wear the same brand head to toe. Right,
you might have like a Louis Vuitton backpack, pair of
Jordan sneakers, Supreme hoodie on where else can you get
all that other than stock X?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Nowhere you can get knockoffs on Canal Street and that's
about it. So stock ex spellers they pay a processing
fee and then there's a trans transaction fee and that's
how that's the revenue model. Right, it's phees on the purchases.
I mean, I know the growth has been astronomical. What's
(17:19):
new for you? Where's the next kind of growth? Is
it just opening the aperture to sell more things, or
is it I don't know, going into more markets or
what is the next phase.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
For stock X.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah, the beauty of a company like stock X we
have multiple opportunities to grow, Right, we talked about the
categories that we're in, Like today it's sneakers, apparel, accessories, collectibles.
Every day there's something new coming out, what's trending on
the site right now. If you're not familiar with it,
you can google it like pop Mart, Lubooboo, these cool
monster little stuffed animals that a lot of people are
(17:55):
using to accessorize a seven thousand dollars Louis Vuitton bag,
Like that's cool, and there's always new accessories coming out.
The big, the big opportunity for us is that what
you talked about, there's a lot of people that don't know.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
The brand right now.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Right so the core sneaker heads, you, me, everyone who
loves the brand, We're going to build the brand.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
We're going to.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Continue to build the brand for that segment. We call
them the core, so the people that represent the sellers
and buyers. And for us growing up, like when there
was significant scarcity, it was all about the cop right, Hey,
like Jordan's just dropped a new colorway. Either wait in
line to get them, or the sneakers app came out.
You're bidding within thirty seconds, and I don't know about you.
(18:39):
Ninety nine percent of the time it's like sorry, Nick.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
You didn't get them.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And then one out of one hundred times you get
the gottam message and you get excited.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Rights, I'm also not going to wait in line for
four hours. Yeah, I think I'm just not going to
do it.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
So you're getting to the opportunity, right. So I'm still like,
I get the notification, it's a silhouette or colorway I wanted.
I'm going to try to get them. But all the category,
all the opportunity has been around that moment, and that
there will never be anything that replaces a special moment
of the gottom But think about the moment before that
and the user journey and after that. Right. So, you
(19:13):
and I were New Yorkers, like most of my adult life,
early adult life was in New York City. Again, I
worked on Lafayette Street. I got inspired walking down the street.
I'd see someone wearing something I would take take a picture,
ask them where'd you get those from? All the time, Right,
they probably get wigged out saying you come up to them,
you're a big guy. But yeah, we have the benefit
(19:36):
our headquarters in Detroit. You and I are in New York,
Like we have the benefit of being inspired on the street.
But there's a lot of people like where I grew up,
like in Upstate New York. I call it a sneaker desert. Right,
we didn't have this and like the kids today, when
I go back home to see my mom, you're inspired
on the on the feed, right, it's TikTok, It's Instagram.
(19:57):
That's where you get inspired. So before the cop do
you get it inspired? For us, it's the streets. For others,
it's TikTok or Instagram feed. There's an opportunity to expand
the market share for this audience by moving back to
the inspiration. And then that cop moment isn't going away.
That's still quorda you know, cord of what stock X is.
(20:18):
It's about making a bid, getting the product you want
at the price you want, feeling great about it, and
even downstream from that, it's the fit.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Right, you're wearing him, You're walking down.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
The street and you and I start talking. I'll never
forget the first time I met you, or the second
time I met you were on a zoom at Tommy John.
I think I was wearing my Kobe Grinches and you
were like, oh I hate those, and I had them
on under the table. I was like, damn, I do
remember that.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
You remember that, right, And that's why we never we
still haven't worked together.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
I'm still upset about that.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
No I'm not.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
But that's that's the individuality of this of this category.
Right You get something, you're inspired, you cop it.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Or you don't, and then you wear it out and then.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
That's what it's all about. So we think, if you're
not the course, that we're always going to be serving
that core sneakerhead. But there's an opportunity to expand it
a little broader. What you just said is like I
don't have time to wait in line, Well neither do I,
but I still want to dress that that way. So
that's the opportunity.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
What trends are you excited about that you're seeing?
Speaker 1 (21:20):
I mean, there's so many of them. I think what
you and I were talking about before is one of
the most exciting, right the evolution of what we're doing now,
the evolution of podcasts, right like, coming out of the pandemic,
YouTube surpassed I believe it was Spotify and Apple to
be the number one consumption channel for podcasts. So what
was traditionally a marketing channel that was only through your
(21:42):
ears coming out of the pandemic became one of the
most visual mediums. But more than that, like much more
than that. For me, the biggest thing we play. Stock
X plays a huge role in the sports swim lane.
I can't tell you how many NBA athletes, NFL athletes
when they come by Detroit stually come into our headquarters
to visit and the cops and sneakers, which is what
(22:04):
I would be doing. So access to athletes, you know,
back in the nineties was like going to CAAA working
with an agent, having a meeting. You never got to
interact with these athletes. But the evolution of podcasts with
the athlete as the host and the athlete as a
guest has been extraordinary. Brands have unprecedented access to talent
(22:27):
that never existed before, and athletes are now able to
tell their own story. So I truly think like the
explosion in sports, and you've read about private equity dollars
going into sports, much of that has come through the
humanization of these athletes and they're allowed to then tell
their stories through their own podcasts. Are going on a
podcast with the retired NBA player that are just much
(22:49):
more comfortable talking to each other versus talking to, you know,
a media outlet or a traditional old school journalist. So
that's to me, that's one of the biggest unlocks and
for us, of the earliest activations we had done. We
engage with one of the top sports podcasts you probably
know All the Smoke with Matt barn Steven Jackson to
(23:11):
NBA Legends. Steven Jackson's one of the you know, for
one of the people on the forefront in terms of
human rights. This is one of the evolutions for brands,
Like when you're meeting with these folks and again they're
not actors, so we have to build the brand which
is pixel perfect and curated, but also allow what we
call authentic endorsements. So Matt and Stack Steven Jackson's nickname
(23:35):
is Stack. They were already huge customers of stock x,
so we had a few talking points for them. And
what I normally tell them is like roll the tape,
give us thirty minutes of unfiltered feedback, and we give
them a few talking points. And it's awkward for them
to say, like, you know, the curated marketplace, so like
I don't really know what that means. I'm like, it's cool,
just keep going, and like, Matt, you've purchased dozens of
(23:57):
times for us like just riff with, like, let us
know how you normally do. He pulls out his phone
starts going through his stock ax and they're like, you know,
tell him what you bought. He's like, I bought a
Supreme hoodie last week. Matt Barnes is saying this. Stephen
Jackson goes nice. He's like, I bought uh, you know,
Jordan one Low's Travis Scott's fragment. He's like nice. He's like,
(24:19):
I bought the Nike shocks and stackos trash. So and
they were like they were like, oh sorry, like cut
the tables, like no, no, no, keep going, keep going. So
they were and they were just authentically going back and
forth and they're like, sorry, we'll cut that trash out
of there. I was like, no, no, no, keep it in.
And our first ever social media cut down that we
ran from the podcast included that in there where Matt
(24:43):
Barnes is going through nice nice trash and he was
talking about merchandise a we carry on our site, and
it was like, you know, nowhere would you put that
in your brand book, Like it's cool to call your
product and your merchant you're carrying trash. But this authentic
endorsement and storytelling and having it be unfiltered. It is extraordinary.
So I'm just I couldn't be more bullish on on
(25:04):
this medium and what it's done for access for brands
and athletes and more.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
What's another medium beyond podcast that you feel moves the
needle for your brand.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
For us, and again because of our demographic and because
of the the nature of that collectibles category, which is
very spiky, TikTok has been a huge unlocked for us.
TikTok marketplace, U TikTok, TikTok Shop, TikTok Marketplace. We're not
into yet, but just the awareness because these collectibles come
in and out so quickly and the stock x brand
(25:37):
is so strong. So I'll give you example. Pop Mark
Lamoo Boo launched what they call blind boxes, so you
get a box, you don't know what you're getting, you
rip it open. So organically on TikTok, that trend of
unboxing moments just took off, and then this young segment
came in and said like, hey, we're like, where can
(25:58):
I get those and where can I trust that these
are legitimately.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
PopMart Labu Bu Like nobody opened.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
The box and replaced them with the less coveted items
and again current culture marketplace have what I need trusted.
That's where stock X plays and that's where we benefit.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Was there one big even in the past, like some
big breakthrough that made stock x the brand awareness catapult
or was it a slow build over time?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, it's funny. It's it's been built over time, and
we looked at the last three years worth of data.
It's been consistent and it's been through just word of
mouth and delivering that. It's funny. Our new tagline is
stock x now you know. So the tongue in cheek
is like if you're in the core sneaker head like
of course, you know, and the confidence that StockX provides
of like, hey, where'd you get that stock x?
Speaker 4 (26:48):
All right?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Like that's how you know. And then the peripheral folks
who are looking at like the cool sneaker heads and
what they're wearing, they're becoming educated just through word of mouth,
authentic word of mouth. So that's why we love that tagline.
Now you know stock X Now you know, that's how
it's that's how it's going and we're all about expanding
the brand. But we again we can never lose sight
(27:11):
of that core sneaker head community, and anything we do
to artificially spike that up, I don't think we'll be
received well and it would be a disservice to the
brand we're building. But what I will tell you, in
the last few weeks, we've been excited about this. You
can go back and look at this. We were mentioned
on like a national news station when PopMart Lebooboo came out.
(27:33):
Jimmy Fallon came out just last week and was poking
fun at someone and he essentially was talking about, Hey,
what's the biggest thing you could think of? And he
was talking about gifting a stock X gift card. One
of my favorite moments I was at Detroit headquarters for
the Pistons versus Nicks playoff game. Literally six hours before
(27:54):
Game six in Detroit. PJ. Tucker, who is like, you know,
maybe gift to this intersection of athletes and sneaker heads.
He has the best sneaker collection of anyone in the NBA,
and that's universally agreed upon, swings by headquarters hours before
Game six. He actually knew someone on the marketing team
called and said, hey, can I swing by? So there's
(28:16):
very few brands that get that type of like authentic
drive by traffic, and our goal is to keep.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
It that way.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Do you capture any of that when that happens.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, if they allow us, so, I'm sure there's I'm
sure there's a cutdown on TikTok or Instagram. We have
something very coveted. We have a super secret sneaker store
at our headquarters.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
That only a hand will know about. Now you know
about and all.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Your listeners will know about it. But they do come
in if they're comfortable. We're like, hey, could we just
put a mic on you and just answer a few questions.
It's authentic, it's genuine, it's on brand for stock X,
And like PJ. Tucker talking about his first and most
coveted sneaker story, it's just, you know, this catory and
the products we carry were made for storytelling. Everyone talks
(29:03):
about storytelling, but stock X has permission to do it
like no other brand.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
What are you, if you can brag for a second,
what are you particularly good at that maybe you've always
had in you or you've honed that skill for you know,
decades in the business.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
What do you think makes you unique at your CMO position.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Good question. I think I think everyone has this, So
I truly believe everyone has this. I think it takes
a certain level of maybe it's career stage or confidence
to listen to it. My super powers under night light.
It's reading people, so somewhat important at those bigger companies
(29:46):
I worked at, but at founder led startups, like you know,
when you meet someone, you probably get this.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
When you're you're.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Pitching brands, right you're sitting in a room, you intuitively
get a read of that room, like these guys, this
is a brave room. There's one DECI vision maker. They're
going to be bold or you're gonna have a room
full of people that are like, oh man, everyone's you know,
everyone's like defaulting to someone else here. They don't really
have conviction. They're talking about like return on AdSpend with
(30:13):
a twenty four hour window. This isn't going to go well,
Like at some point you have to develop that conviction.
When I met, you know, even one of the jobs before.
I'm trying to give you an example, like when meal
kits came.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
Out they were coming to America back in twenty.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Thirteen, you know, and the functional side of me was like,
We're going to take two dollars worth of groceries, shove
them into a box with ice cubes and sell it
for twelve dollars. Like that might be the stupidest idea
I've ever heard. But then I met the founders who
Plated and it was you know, Nick and Josh, and
Nick was this big guy and he was like, you're
missing the point. He's like, food in America is broken.
(30:49):
People are as disconnected as they've ever been. This isn't
about two dollars worth of food. This is about bringing
people together in the kitchen twice a week. Boom, right.
So people, people, vision, Financial opportunity will come if you're
working with the right people and you build the right brand.
And all those exits. Plated had an extraordinary exit, Bowmen
(31:11):
Branch had an extraordinary extraordinary exit. Same for Tommy John.
It all came down to, like the marketing teams. I
get to work with our privilege, and the marketing team
is the team that executes. But it all starts at
the top and it's about people and vision. And like
I'm talking about the highlights, I've had just as many disasters,
and intuitively you knew that there was just you know,
(31:33):
it was the right amount of pay, It was convenient,
it was a sexy category. But if you don't trust
and admire the people above you, and we have the
privilege of working for a great founder here at StockX,
you got to have a conviction not to go into
that role. So so I think I didn't listen to
that instinct earlier on. But I'm at the stage of.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
My career where I would never work with people I
don't admire.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
How do you balance as a CMO and your current role,
how do you balance the idea of brand building with performance.
You know, you've got to drive business performance month to month,
quarter to quarter, but you also have to invest and
spend in building the brand because ultimately you know that
that has a lot of value.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
It's just a longer term burn. That's kind of my
sole and science question of brand and performance.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah, I appreciate the question. It's also my least favorite, right,
everything you know this. You you've probably taught me some
of this at our first meeting. Everything we do is
brand and everything we do is performance, whether you like
it or not. Right, you send out a text message
for a twenty four hour sale, or you have your epics,
cinematic you know, campaign going out on YouTube streaming during
(32:44):
the NBA playoffs. It all drives people to action. The
only difference for me just to like performance dollars is
like sales today and brand dollars is still some sort
of KPI tomorrow, right, And usually it's sales or transaction
or it's they're like, oh no, that's for consideration. Why consideration, Oh,
because down the road they might buy something, Okay, So
(33:05):
all we're debating is the window of action. That's it.
And if I told you if it was brand or performance,
if I said there's this brand thing to do, We're
going to put a million dollars into this and it's
never going to return anything, well you should shoot me
as a CMO for bringing it and to the table
and and we we should not do that. But like
(33:25):
brand is the moat, right, And I go back to
like I go back to, like you know, plated in
the food space one of the most difficult spaces to
be and Plated raise fifty million, sold for over three
hundred million. Like food is the worst least profitable business
you can get into. But it was built because we
built a brand. It was that it was the ecosystem,
the healthiest player in the meal kit space. Bolham Branch
(33:48):
the best sheet you'll ever sleep on. Why did el
Cadton acquire them? Well, they had an incredible story. They
took one of the worst industries and textile production in India.
They treated the earth right through organic cotton, and they
treated the people right through fair trade wages. So doing
the right things isn't going to drive a sale today,
(34:09):
maybe not tomorrow, but there is value over time, and
you know, you're probably not going to work for any
brands that don't have that vision. I would never work
for a founder or company that doesn't get that. We
could debate where to draw the line, like what percentages brand?
How are you going to keep score? I'm all I'm
down for those debates and the benefit of having a
quantitative background as you can measure something. But man, if
(34:31):
you're if you're only going to be on that performance treadmill,
like good luck.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Do you have a mantra or a quote that you
live by or that you think about or you come back.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
To, Yeah, got a few, I don't have them up
on the wall. I'm a huge, huge fan of Ben
Horowitz at in the recent Horowitz. Sure, I don't know
if you read his book. He's got several books, but like,
what you Do is Who you Are to me is
the ultimate ultimate culture book. And he's he sort of
rages against the big company, the big company environment that
(35:05):
I started my career at. He's like, look, anyone could
put bs values up on a wall. He's like that
values are artificial and there are just words on a page.
Virtue is what you do day in, day out.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
All right, thanks for joining on the Soul and Science podcast,
sharing your wisdom with us, telling us a lot about
stock X and your journey.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
We appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Thanks so much, Vink, Thanks, thanks so much for listening
to Soul and Science and we'll see you next week.
Sole and Science is a mechanism podcast produced by Maggie Bowles,
Brian Tillotson, and Louie Jablonski. The show is edited by
(35:45):
Daniel Ferreira, with theme music by Kyle Merritt and I'm
your host, Jason Harris and Mechanism.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
We build iconic brands with Soul and Science.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
The soul is culturally relevant brand building and the science
is the always on marketing activities that drive the bottom line.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Learn more at mechanism dot com m
Everything we do is brand, and everything we do is performance,
whether you like it or not. So all we're debating
is the window of action. Performance dollars is like sales today,
and brand dollars is still some sort of KPI tomorrow.
It all drives people to.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Action in today's world. How does a brand break through
the noise and become iconic? Join me Jason Harris as
I speak with the world's leading marketing experts about how
they use sole and science to build an iconic brand.
Speaker 3 (00:31):
Think of it as EQ meeting IQ.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
So let's lock in and together fast forward our marketing
minds on the Soul and Science Podcast. Welcome to the
Sole and Science Podcast. Today's episode is all about the
soul and science of marketplace models. We're talking with Nick Carrot,
CMO of StockX, and we're going to dig in and
(00:58):
find out about the business of connecting buyers and sellers.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
Welcome to the show, Nick, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
Jason.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
All right, Nick, I always start with this question, how
you got into the marketing path? Did you fall into it?
Did you study it? Did you grow up as a
young child saying you wanted to be a CMO? How
did you get to where you are now.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yeah, I wish it was linear and only up to
the right, but that's not the case for me, as
it is for probably many others you talked to. So, yeah,
I came out of high school looking to get a
college degree. I thought I was going to play some
sports and wasn't able to. I was good at math
and science, so met with my guidance counselor who said, hey,
you should be a math or an engineering major. So
(01:46):
came out of college with a four year mathematics degree,
programmed in for computer science languages. So took a job
out of college programming. I was a developer, hoodie on
headset on coding away, and I was terrible at it.
I hated it. So I was a developer for about
six months at AT and T right out of college.
(02:08):
The beauty of a big company is that there's so
much opportunity for you to move laterally if you're not
digging what you're doing. So about six months in I
was hanging out a lot after work. I played basketball,
went down to the beach house. So I was hanging
out with a bunch of other new folks at AT
and T, and my group ended up being in the advertising.
(02:29):
We called it Markup Group. So I was spending a
lot of time over there. One of my contacts said, Hey,
don't tell anyone. We're about to bring in Whitney Houston.
We're going to run a national TV campaign. Like that's amazing,
you know, Can I meet her? And they were like, no, sorry,
it doesn't work that way. But what you can do
is come on, teach us what you do. Teach us
(02:49):
how you can add value to the advertising channel and
our investment here. So essentially six months into AT and T,
I wrote what was essentially a attribution. They taught me
about TV advertising, pre logs, post logs. I didn't know
how TV worked. They said, hey, when we run this
TV commercial, could you identify where and when phone calls
(03:11):
spike or when they go down, and you could sort
of help us justify this investment. It's like, I'm down.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
AT and T is a massive org. You would think
they'd have a million people doing that. Why did they
Why did they picked the boogie with the hoodie to
do that?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, So this is the nineties, right during the mad
Men era. So the marketing leadership team and I was
like eight down on the ORG chart to the CMO.
The marketing group back then were salespeople later on the
quant side, but incredibly articulate, so obviously investing tens of
millions of dollars into building the brand, and they wanted
to justify you know, it's a bad word today, but
(03:47):
return on AdSpend back then, they wanted to justify it.
So I literally talked my way into the ORG.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
They're like that guy is he knows computers, and he
knows numbers, and he seems smart. To have him figure
out the attribution model.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Exactly right, exactly right. Yeah, after six months of doing
something I hated, I talked my way over to the
other side, got into advertising and marketing. Spent eight years
at AT and T. I had a technical degree. They
paid for my MBA in marketing, and then you know,
the rest is history.
Speaker 2 (04:20):
What was the best job you had while you were there?
Speaker 1 (04:25):
The best job that I had the last two years
I was. I was running a partnership marketing program. Really
going to date myself. We actually had prepaid ad cards.
So back in the day before most devices, if you
were traveling, you had a prepaid telephone card. They were
a commodity. Didn't matter whether you had at and T
or a competitor, but what we had done people started
(04:48):
to treat them almost like collectible baseball cards. So we
did a partnership with the NBA and we had players
on the prepaid phone cards. So that was sort of
my first entrance into the collectible market. A lot of
people were buying these cards because they had a player
on them. They weren't actually scratching the back or using
the card, so it became a high revenue stream for us.
With a ton of breakage in the industry, people weren't
(05:10):
using them so far and away the most exciting piece.
Privileged to work at AT and T for you great
cmos and huge agencies. It was almost like going back
to business school. The day to day work wasn't nearly
as exciting, but when you get to work with brands
like the NBA, that was super rewarding.
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Oh it's amazing. And then where'd you go next? After
AT and T?
Speaker 1 (05:32):
After AT and T went to one other blue chip
So Citybank was building the E business Center of Excellence.
With the emerging of the Internet, they were trying to shift.
The headline was they wanted to get credit card applications
from old school prints into the Internet, so I built
that out. It was right about the time my first
child was born, so Sophia was born. We were looking
(05:55):
for a work life balance. So I was like, yeah,
I could do this for a year. It became two years,
four years. So I always had the itch to go
small and entrepreneurial, but I spent four years a City Group. Again,
had the privilege to work with great folks. It was
actually during the time and you'll love this because of
your agency background back in two thousand, I believe it
(06:16):
was we'd worked with City Group. We brought in. We
had worked with Fallon, the agency out of Minneapolis, so
they came in, they did some research. I'll never forget
it was such a hard hitting feedback they had given us.
But the headline of the pitch was, look, you know,
the dot com boom just happened. People don't trust banks.
The bad news is they don't trust City Bank more
(06:37):
than anyone else. So we're They pitched us essentially this
anti banks sentiment. It's not about you know, the most
the size of your yacht, it's not about aprs. It's
about the quality of life. So they're like, you're missing it.
All banks are missing it. People don't want to be rich,
they want to live richly. So that was the moment.
I had studied advertising in college, we had around campaigns.
(07:01):
That was one of the most like emotional moments for me,
and I saw what an ad campaign could do for,
you know, a traditional kind of sleepy brand like City Group,
and it was powerful. I got to meet actually several
folks at Fallon, the brand strategists, the chief creative officer,
and those relationships are still with me to today. So
many of those relationships I brought those folks, you know
(07:23):
how the process goes. They hung up their own shingles.
They still some of them in state at Minneapolis. So
I brought those brand strategists, those creatives, those copywriters with
me throughout my journey.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Fast forwarding a little bit, tell me about balling Branch.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
Yeah, so it's all about relationships, right, Jason, Like, that's
how you and I are here today. We've met a
few times, we gave this close to working together and
we always stayed in touch and I admired your work.
So yeah, I knew after that, you know what, twelve
thirteen year run at Blue Chips, like disruptive founder led
companies was my thing. That's what I love doing. It's
what I was passionate about. So my oldest daughter that
(08:01):
I talked about played club soccer live out in Summit,
New Jersey. Here that's out my window. Was at a
game and our town has a bunch of Wall Street
finance types and there was like me and a T
shirt and another guy in a T shirt. They're like, hey,
you're a startup guy, right, I'm like, yeah, that's me.
They're like that guy down there sells sheets. So my
daughter was a My daughter was a center back. She
(08:24):
was a left center back, and the daughter of the
Blow and Ranch founders was a right center back. I
went down and introduced myself. We had stayed in touch
for years. We were always swapping advice back and forth.
Hey what are you seeing on you know, Facebook? CPMs
are up? Did you ever work with you know, Jason
and Mechanism. Yeah, he's a great guy. You should engage
with him. We were always swapping advice for years, and
(08:45):
then he had an opening and he was like, Hey,
I need I need a CMO. There's a bunch of
inbound interest for this company. I'm going to hire a
bank and see if there's any potential transaction that could
happen with the business. So I joined him. So we
were friends for three years, joined him as one of
his first cmos, and he allowed me one of the
(09:06):
biggest benefits out of that job. He allowed me to
ride shuck gun with him on the transaction of his company,
which ultimately had a recapitalization or transaction with el Cadterton,
the biggest consumer private equity company in the world. Like
husband and wife, founder, the greatest people killer brand, and
(09:27):
a remarkable opportunity. One of the highlights of my career.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I love that El Cadjan's good. El Cataden really rarely misses.
And then obviously you worked at Tommy John for almost.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Five years, right, yep, five years.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
Tell me about that journey.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
Yeah, every journey is unique, right. So I always preach
like the beginner's mindset, Like you know, leave your playbook
at home. We don't need a playbook. We need curiosity
and conviction. Right, come in here, understand the space, talk
to people, talk to the experts, and then formulating an opinion. Uh,
it's around the way I got the job. There's there's
(10:05):
a bunch of businesses in the Northeast. Bunch of startups.
Many of them get on the venture capitalists like train,
they raise money and they sprint. Bawlin, Branch and Tommy John,
the founders were actually friends. I did not know the
founders of Tommy John. They were part of the cohort
that were, for lack of a better word, they were
anti VC. They were like profitable growth reeput. You sew
(10:29):
profitable on first customer acquisition, and we're going to build
a profitable business day one. Super admirable. Both built extraordinary
brands and they did it the hard way, and I
would say the right way. But the downside of that,
in general on pro VC, the downside of that is
without being part of a portfolio private equity venture portfolio,
(10:50):
you don't have sister companies to talk to. So there's
a bunch of these relationships that happened. And Tommy John
founders and Ball and Branch founders were actually friends, and
without having sister companies, because they never took investment dollars,
they were always talking to each other.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
Oh that's cool, I got you.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
So they were sort of like strategic advisors for each other.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
And then that's what we got in. That's really cool.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yeah, And if you'll see a lot of the similar
agencies worked at both a lot of similar and it
was because of the founders were sharing stories.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
Just real quick, the question do you believe in running
a business from the fundamentals of building profitability and or
do you believe that you should take money and grow
as fast as you can?
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yeah? Good question and the answer is nuanced right, So always, always, always,
if you could grow profitably, like generate income on your
first customer acquisition, build your brand alongside that, that's the dream,
that's the ideal. Look, there's some scenarios where you're in
a dogfight right your brand, you're on the clock. There's
(11:57):
a land grab moment. You have to gain mind share
and market share at the same time. In those moments,
in those categories, it's irresponsible not to take money, right
because what VC dollars. With the right partner, whether it's
private equity or VC, the right partner will work alongside you.
They'll make your business that much better and they'll allow
you to move faster. And I think you have to realize,
(12:20):
like it's not a one size fit all and as
a founder, you need to realize, like, do we have
a unique product, is this defendable and for how long?
And if you're running out of time to gain market share,
like you better get a partner, and you better take
some money off the table, and you better invest in
your brand. So I know it's not a complete answer
for you, but it depends on the situation.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
You need the right partner to propel your brand because
you're going to have barbarians at the gate, and you
got to get there as fast as you can.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
And you never have as much runway as you think
you have. You never have it. Someone's watching you. And
this day and age, it's so easy to replicate. I
could be like Jason's going to build my brand. I
got three growth hacks. I'm going to rip off your
growth stack. I could do everything you're doing right within
within weeks. So it's a dangerous time. It's a cool
time to launch a brand, it's a dangerous time to
(13:09):
build a brand. You just got to be smart and
aggressive about it.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
All right.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
And that leads us to your current job as CMO
of stock X, which when you got that job, there's
a few jobs that I'm jealous of. That was one
of them. I was like, God, I would take that job.
That job sounds amazing because I am I know, your
demographics younger than me, but I am I'm on the
(13:34):
older fringes, but I am a hardcore stock x user.
I love the brand and it always is delivered for me.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Foremost, I appreciate you being a customer. We value any feedback,
so maybe after this call you can give me some
We appreciate it. On the personal side, I felt the
same way as you. You know, you get a lot
of inbound calls, at least if you're on the brand
side and you work with great brands like Tommy Johner,
Bowmen Branch, you get a ton of inbound calls because
of the drength of the brand you worked with. When
stock x came in, I felt the same way you felt,
(14:04):
and all of I'm a New Yorker, all my New
York friends felt the same way I felt. So yeah.
For me personally, I grew up in outside of Syracuse,
in a small town. I lived through like the eighties
and nineties, like Big eiaest basketball, like that timeframe, and
I joked that I'm the only person at stock x
who actually wore Jordan Ones on a court late in
(14:25):
the eighties. So this this company, this product that was
a customer of it. It just spoke to me and
it was an incredible, incredible opportunity. So it was you
flattered when they called me, reached out, met with Greg
the founder. We just hit it off and I was like, yeah,
I would love to work here if there's a match.
Both ways.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
I'm sure most most listeners know stock X, but either way,
if some don't explain stock X to me, like I'm
your grandma.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
So yeah, so stock X in formal terms, we're the
current culture marketplace, right so what that means in layman's terms,
we're known for the last ten years, we're known for
our core category, which is sneakers. So think of it
when there's a drop, whether you're into Jordan's or on
Cloud or any other sneaker. When there's a drop and
it sells out and you don't get it, well, there's
(15:16):
a marketplace, a peer to peer marketplace where you can
get what you miss out on, and that place is
stock X. So our core started out as sneakers, but
we're so much more than that right now. We've got apparel, accessories, collectibles,
so anything that is coveted, the things that you love
in life that sometimes you miss out on everything you
want or need is here at stock X. So that's
(15:40):
really what the brand is about. And to humanize it
a little bit more like there's a big, big cultural
movement around individualism and signaling sort of like who you are,
Like you and I are New Yorkers. Like when I
see someone in New York, I the privilege of working
on Lafayette Street in New York. When I see someone
rocking like a kiss Nick's, Jack Kid and Jordan One's
(16:02):
and they've got that basketball vibe about him, like that's
that's a New Yorker And you could tell immediately like
that person's one of my people, right New York and nowhere, Yeah,
exactly right.
Speaker 4 (16:12):
But I've got a.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Good friend who actually got into soccer later in life
because of my daughter and my son who played it.
But I got a good friend from Barcelona who lives
in South Beach, and I love South Beach Like I'm
not from there, but I love it.
Speaker 4 (16:25):
I go down there.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
He's rocking like the first Sambas. He's got the Miami
Vice Inter Miami Soccer kit, like man head to toe.
This guy's just tight. He looks good. He looks apart,
like that's not me, but that's his tribe and he
signals it, and I always go back to stock X.
It's the only it's the only site. It's the only
marketplace that reflects each of our closets, right, because none
(16:48):
of us wear the same brand head to toe. Right,
you might have like a Louis Vuitton backpack, pair of
Jordan sneakers, Supreme hoodie on where else can you get
all that other than stock X?
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Nowhere you can get knockoffs on Canal Street and that's
about it. So stock ex spellers they pay a processing
fee and then there's a trans transaction fee and that's
how that's the revenue model. Right, it's phees on the purchases.
I mean, I know the growth has been astronomical. What's
(17:19):
new for you? Where's the next kind of growth? Is
it just opening the aperture to sell more things, or
is it I don't know, going into more markets or
what is the next phase.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
For stock X.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
Yeah, the beauty of a company like stock X we
have multiple opportunities to grow, Right, we talked about the
categories that we're in, Like today it's sneakers, apparel, accessories, collectibles.
Every day there's something new coming out, what's trending on
the site right now. If you're not familiar with it,
you can google it like pop Mart, Lubooboo, these cool
monster little stuffed animals that a lot of people are
(17:55):
using to accessorize a seven thousand dollars Louis Vuitton bag,
Like that's cool, and there's always new accessories coming out.
The big, the big opportunity for us is that what
you talked about, there's a lot of people that don't know.
Speaker 4 (18:10):
The brand right now.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Right so the core sneaker heads, you, me, everyone who
loves the brand, We're going to build the brand.
Speaker 4 (18:17):
We're going to.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
Continue to build the brand for that segment. We call
them the core, so the people that represent the sellers
and buyers. And for us growing up, like when there
was significant scarcity, it was all about the cop right, Hey,
like Jordan's just dropped a new colorway. Either wait in
line to get them, or the sneakers app came out.
You're bidding within thirty seconds, and I don't know about you.
(18:39):
Ninety nine percent of the time it's like sorry, Nick.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
You didn't get them.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And then one out of one hundred times you get
the gottam message and you get excited.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
Rights, I'm also not going to wait in line for
four hours. Yeah, I think I'm just not going to
do it.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
So you're getting to the opportunity, right. So I'm still like,
I get the notification, it's a silhouette or colorway I wanted.
I'm going to try to get them. But all the category,
all the opportunity has been around that moment, and that
there will never be anything that replaces a special moment
of the gottom But think about the moment before that
and the user journey and after that. Right. So, you
(19:13):
and I were New Yorkers, like most of my adult life,
early adult life was in New York City. Again, I
worked on Lafayette Street. I got inspired walking down the street.
I'd see someone wearing something I would take take a picture,
ask them where'd you get those from? All the time, Right,
they probably get wigged out saying you come up to them,
you're a big guy. But yeah, we have the benefit
(19:36):
our headquarters in Detroit. You and I are in New York,
Like we have the benefit of being inspired on the street.
But there's a lot of people like where I grew up,
like in Upstate New York. I call it a sneaker desert. Right,
we didn't have this and like the kids today, when
I go back home to see my mom, you're inspired
on the on the feed, right, it's TikTok, It's Instagram.
(19:57):
That's where you get inspired. So before the cop do
you get it inspired? For us, it's the streets. For others,
it's TikTok or Instagram feed. There's an opportunity to expand
the market share for this audience by moving back to
the inspiration. And then that cop moment isn't going away.
That's still quorda you know, cord of what stock X is.
(20:18):
It's about making a bid, getting the product you want
at the price you want, feeling great about it, and
even downstream from that, it's the fit.
Speaker 4 (20:26):
Right, you're wearing him, You're walking down.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
The street and you and I start talking. I'll never
forget the first time I met you, or the second
time I met you were on a zoom at Tommy John.
I think I was wearing my Kobe Grinches and you
were like, oh I hate those, and I had them
on under the table. I was like, damn, I do
remember that.
Speaker 2 (20:44):
You remember that, right, And that's why we never we
still haven't worked together.
Speaker 1 (20:49):
I'm still upset about that.
Speaker 4 (20:51):
No I'm not.
Speaker 1 (20:52):
But that's that's the individuality of this of this category.
Right You get something, you're inspired, you cop it.
Speaker 4 (20:58):
Or you don't, and then you wear it out and then.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
That's what it's all about. So we think, if you're
not the course, that we're always going to be serving
that core sneakerhead. But there's an opportunity to expand it
a little broader. What you just said is like I
don't have time to wait in line, Well neither do I,
but I still want to dress that that way. So
that's the opportunity.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
What trends are you excited about that you're seeing?
Speaker 1 (21:20):
I mean, there's so many of them. I think what
you and I were talking about before is one of
the most exciting, right the evolution of what we're doing now,
the evolution of podcasts, right like, coming out of the pandemic,
YouTube surpassed I believe it was Spotify and Apple to
be the number one consumption channel for podcasts. So what
was traditionally a marketing channel that was only through your
(21:42):
ears coming out of the pandemic became one of the
most visual mediums. But more than that, like much more
than that. For me, the biggest thing we play. Stock
X plays a huge role in the sports swim lane.
I can't tell you how many NBA athletes, NFL athletes
when they come by Detroit stually come into our headquarters
to visit and the cops and sneakers, which is what
(22:04):
I would be doing. So access to athletes, you know,
back in the nineties was like going to CAAA working
with an agent, having a meeting. You never got to
interact with these athletes. But the evolution of podcasts with
the athlete as the host and the athlete as a
guest has been extraordinary. Brands have unprecedented access to talent
(22:27):
that never existed before, and athletes are now able to
tell their own story. So I truly think like the
explosion in sports, and you've read about private equity dollars
going into sports, much of that has come through the
humanization of these athletes and they're allowed to then tell
their stories through their own podcasts. Are going on a
podcast with the retired NBA player that are just much
(22:49):
more comfortable talking to each other versus talking to, you know,
a media outlet or a traditional old school journalist. So
that's to me, that's one of the biggest unlocks and
for us, of the earliest activations we had done. We
engage with one of the top sports podcasts you probably
know All the Smoke with Matt barn Steven Jackson to
(23:11):
NBA Legends. Steven Jackson's one of the you know, for
one of the people on the forefront in terms of
human rights. This is one of the evolutions for brands,
Like when you're meeting with these folks and again they're
not actors, so we have to build the brand which
is pixel perfect and curated, but also allow what we
call authentic endorsements. So Matt and Stack Steven Jackson's nickname
(23:35):
is Stack. They were already huge customers of stock x,
so we had a few talking points for them. And
what I normally tell them is like roll the tape,
give us thirty minutes of unfiltered feedback, and we give
them a few talking points. And it's awkward for them
to say, like, you know, the curated marketplace, so like
I don't really know what that means. I'm like, it's cool,
just keep going, and like, Matt, you've purchased dozens of
(23:57):
times for us like just riff with, like, let us
know how you normally do. He pulls out his phone
starts going through his stock ax and they're like, you know,
tell him what you bought. He's like, I bought a
Supreme hoodie last week. Matt Barnes is saying this. Stephen
Jackson goes nice. He's like, I bought uh, you know,
Jordan one Low's Travis Scott's fragment. He's like nice. He's like,
(24:19):
I bought the Nike shocks and stackos trash. So and
they were like they were like, oh sorry, like cut
the tables, like no, no, no, keep going, keep going. So
they were and they were just authentically going back and
forth and they're like, sorry, we'll cut that trash out
of there. I was like, no, no, no, keep it in.
And our first ever social media cut down that we
ran from the podcast included that in there where Matt
(24:43):
Barnes is going through nice nice trash and he was
talking about merchandise a we carry on our site, and
it was like, you know, nowhere would you put that
in your brand book, Like it's cool to call your
product and your merchant you're carrying trash. But this authentic
endorsement and storytelling and having it be unfiltered. It is extraordinary.
So I'm just I couldn't be more bullish on on
(25:04):
this medium and what it's done for access for brands
and athletes and more.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
What's another medium beyond podcast that you feel moves the
needle for your brand.
Speaker 1 (25:15):
For us, and again because of our demographic and because
of the the nature of that collectibles category, which is
very spiky, TikTok has been a huge unlocked for us.
TikTok marketplace, U TikTok, TikTok Shop, TikTok Marketplace. We're not
into yet, but just the awareness because these collectibles come
in and out so quickly and the stock x brand
(25:37):
is so strong. So I'll give you example. Pop Mark
Lamoo Boo launched what they call blind boxes, so you
get a box, you don't know what you're getting, you
rip it open. So organically on TikTok, that trend of
unboxing moments just took off, and then this young segment
came in and said like, hey, we're like, where can
(25:58):
I get those and where can I trust that these
are legitimately.
Speaker 4 (26:01):
PopMart Labu Bu Like nobody opened.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
The box and replaced them with the less coveted items
and again current culture marketplace have what I need trusted.
That's where stock X plays and that's where we benefit.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Was there one big even in the past, like some
big breakthrough that made stock x the brand awareness catapult
or was it a slow build over time?
Speaker 1 (26:26):
Yeah, it's funny. It's it's been built over time, and
we looked at the last three years worth of data.
It's been consistent and it's been through just word of
mouth and delivering that. It's funny. Our new tagline is
stock x now you know. So the tongue in cheek
is like if you're in the core sneaker head like
of course, you know, and the confidence that StockX provides
of like, hey, where'd you get that stock x?
Speaker 4 (26:48):
All right?
Speaker 1 (26:48):
Like that's how you know. And then the peripheral folks
who are looking at like the cool sneaker heads and
what they're wearing, they're becoming educated just through word of mouth,
authentic word of mouth. So that's why we love that tagline.
Now you know stock X Now you know, that's how
it's that's how it's going and we're all about expanding
the brand. But we again we can never lose sight
(27:11):
of that core sneaker head community, and anything we do
to artificially spike that up, I don't think we'll be
received well and it would be a disservice to the
brand we're building. But what I will tell you, in
the last few weeks, we've been excited about this. You
can go back and look at this. We were mentioned
on like a national news station when PopMart Lebooboo came out.
(27:33):
Jimmy Fallon came out just last week and was poking
fun at someone and he essentially was talking about, Hey,
what's the biggest thing you could think of? And he
was talking about gifting a stock X gift card. One
of my favorite moments I was at Detroit headquarters for
the Pistons versus Nicks playoff game. Literally six hours before
(27:54):
Game six in Detroit. PJ. Tucker, who is like, you know,
maybe gift to this intersection of athletes and sneaker heads.
He has the best sneaker collection of anyone in the NBA,
and that's universally agreed upon, swings by headquarters hours before
Game six. He actually knew someone on the marketing team
called and said, hey, can I swing by? So there's
(28:16):
very few brands that get that type of like authentic
drive by traffic, and our goal is to keep.
Speaker 4 (28:22):
It that way.
Speaker 3 (28:23):
Do you capture any of that when that happens.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Yeah, if they allow us, so, I'm sure there's I'm
sure there's a cutdown on TikTok or Instagram. We have
something very coveted. We have a super secret sneaker store
at our headquarters.
Speaker 4 (28:39):
That only a hand will know about. Now you know
about and all.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
Your listeners will know about it. But they do come
in if they're comfortable. We're like, hey, could we just
put a mic on you and just answer a few questions.
It's authentic, it's genuine, it's on brand for stock X,
And like PJ. Tucker talking about his first and most
coveted sneaker story, it's just, you know, this catory and
the products we carry were made for storytelling. Everyone talks
(29:03):
about storytelling, but stock X has permission to do it
like no other brand.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
What are you, if you can brag for a second,
what are you particularly good at that maybe you've always
had in you or you've honed that skill for you know,
decades in the business.
Speaker 3 (29:20):
What do you think makes you unique at your CMO position.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Good question. I think I think everyone has this, So
I truly believe everyone has this. I think it takes
a certain level of maybe it's career stage or confidence
to listen to it. My super powers under night light.
It's reading people, so somewhat important at those bigger companies
(29:46):
I worked at, but at founder led startups, like you know,
when you meet someone, you probably get this.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
When you're you're.
Speaker 1 (29:52):
Pitching brands, right you're sitting in a room, you intuitively
get a read of that room, like these guys, this
is a brave room. There's one DECI vision maker. They're
going to be bold or you're gonna have a room
full of people that are like, oh man, everyone's you know,
everyone's like defaulting to someone else here. They don't really
have conviction. They're talking about like return on AdSpend with
(30:13):
a twenty four hour window. This isn't going to go well,
Like at some point you have to develop that conviction.
When I met, you know, even one of the jobs before.
I'm trying to give you an example, like when meal
kits came.
Speaker 4 (30:26):
Out they were coming to America back in twenty.
Speaker 1 (30:28):
Thirteen, you know, and the functional side of me was like,
We're going to take two dollars worth of groceries, shove
them into a box with ice cubes and sell it
for twelve dollars. Like that might be the stupidest idea
I've ever heard. But then I met the founders who
Plated and it was you know, Nick and Josh, and
Nick was this big guy and he was like, you're
missing the point. He's like, food in America is broken.
(30:49):
People are as disconnected as they've ever been. This isn't
about two dollars worth of food. This is about bringing
people together in the kitchen twice a week. Boom, right.
So people, people, vision, Financial opportunity will come if you're
working with the right people and you build the right brand.
And all those exits. Plated had an extraordinary exit, Bowmen
(31:11):
Branch had an extraordinary extraordinary exit. Same for Tommy John.
It all came down to, like the marketing teams. I
get to work with our privilege, and the marketing team
is the team that executes. But it all starts at
the top and it's about people and vision. And like
I'm talking about the highlights, I've had just as many disasters,
and intuitively you knew that there was just you know,
(31:33):
it was the right amount of pay, It was convenient,
it was a sexy category. But if you don't trust
and admire the people above you, and we have the
privilege of working for a great founder here at StockX,
you got to have a conviction not to go into
that role. So so I think I didn't listen to
that instinct earlier on. But I'm at the stage of.
Speaker 4 (31:52):
My career where I would never work with people I
don't admire.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
How do you balance as a CMO and your current role,
how do you balance the idea of brand building with performance.
You know, you've got to drive business performance month to month,
quarter to quarter, but you also have to invest and
spend in building the brand because ultimately you know that
that has a lot of value.
Speaker 3 (32:17):
It's just a longer term burn. That's kind of my
sole and science question of brand and performance.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah, I appreciate the question. It's also my least favorite, right,
everything you know this. You you've probably taught me some
of this at our first meeting. Everything we do is
brand and everything we do is performance, whether you like
it or not. Right, you send out a text message
for a twenty four hour sale, or you have your epics,
cinematic you know, campaign going out on YouTube streaming during
(32:44):
the NBA playoffs. It all drives people to action. The
only difference for me just to like performance dollars is
like sales today and brand dollars is still some sort
of KPI tomorrow, right, And usually it's sales or transaction
or it's they're like, oh no, that's for consideration. Why consideration, Oh,
because down the road they might buy something, Okay, So
(33:05):
all we're debating is the window of action. That's it.
And if I told you if it was brand or performance,
if I said there's this brand thing to do, We're
going to put a million dollars into this and it's
never going to return anything, well you should shoot me
as a CMO for bringing it and to the table
and and we we should not do that. But like
(33:25):
brand is the moat, right, And I go back to
like I go back to, like you know, plated in
the food space one of the most difficult spaces to
be and Plated raise fifty million, sold for over three
hundred million. Like food is the worst least profitable business
you can get into. But it was built because we
built a brand. It was that it was the ecosystem,
the healthiest player in the meal kit space. Bolham Branch
(33:48):
the best sheet you'll ever sleep on. Why did el
Cadton acquire them? Well, they had an incredible story. They
took one of the worst industries and textile production in India.
They treated the earth right through organic cotton, and they
treated the people right through fair trade wages. So doing
the right things isn't going to drive a sale today,
(34:09):
maybe not tomorrow, but there is value over time, and
you know, you're probably not going to work for any
brands that don't have that vision. I would never work
for a founder or company that doesn't get that. We
could debate where to draw the line, like what percentages brand?
How are you going to keep score? I'm all I'm
down for those debates and the benefit of having a
quantitative background as you can measure something. But man, if
(34:31):
you're if you're only going to be on that performance treadmill,
like good luck.
Speaker 3 (34:35):
Do you have a mantra or a quote that you
live by or that you think about or you come back.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
To, Yeah, got a few, I don't have them up
on the wall. I'm a huge, huge fan of Ben
Horowitz at in the recent Horowitz. Sure, I don't know
if you read his book. He's got several books, but like,
what you Do is Who you Are to me is
the ultimate ultimate culture book. And he's he sort of
rages against the big company, the big company environment that
(35:05):
I started my career at. He's like, look, anyone could
put bs values up on a wall. He's like that
values are artificial and there are just words on a page.
Virtue is what you do day in, day out.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
All right, thanks for joining on the Soul and Science podcast,
sharing your wisdom with us, telling us a lot about
stock X and your journey.
Speaker 3 (35:24):
We appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
Thanks so much, Vink, Thanks, thanks so much for listening
to Soul and Science and we'll see you next week.
Sole and Science is a mechanism podcast produced by Maggie Bowles,
Brian Tillotson, and Louie Jablonski. The show is edited by
(35:45):
Daniel Ferreira, with theme music by Kyle Merritt and I'm
your host, Jason Harris and Mechanism.
Speaker 3 (35:52):
We build iconic brands with Soul and Science.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
The soul is culturally relevant brand building and the science
is the always on marketing activities that drive the bottom line.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Learn more at mechanism dot com m
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