Eschew irony. One reason I initially missed the charm of Life Is Good is that I misinterpreted its message. I sensed a smugness there, as though the wearer were proclaiming, "My life is good," or else a willful blinkeredness: "Life is good if you make enough money and live in a First World democracy." But the Jacobses mean neither of those things. Rather, the words are an exhortation to appreciate the here and now. "Don't determine that you're going to be happy when you get the new car or the big promotion or when you meet that special person," explains John. "You can decide that you're going to be happy today."
John points out that the assertion is, in fact, a modest one. "It's important that we're saying 'Life is good,' not 'Life is great," he says.
John also points out that the assertion is, in fact, a modest one. "It's important that we're saying 'Life is good,' not 'Life is great' or 'Life is perfect," he says. "There's a big difference. We know that there are lots of bad things in the world. But overall life is good. You have to focus on the good things and help others to focus on the good things." That message has resonated with people facing adversity, an unanticipated development that has made the business more meaningful to the Jacobses. Leafing through the brothers' scrapbooks, I come across photos of smiling children wearing Life Is Good caps to cover the ravages of chemotherapy. Recalling my early assumptions, I give myself a mental swat.
Listen to your friends. Disregard the experts. The Jacobses don't have business backgrounds. Bert majored in communications at Villanova, and John studied art and English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. What they do have is a shared gut in which they place enormous trust. In general, their instincts have guided them well, chiefly in the direction of measured expansion and rapid diversification (new product categories, new distribution models, international growth, real estate investments).
The brothers also trust the instincts of their vast circle of friends and employees. It was a bunch of chums who initially selected a drawing of Jake (done by John) and "Life Is Good" from an assortment of images and slogans the Jacobses were testing out during a between-sales-trips kegger in the early '90s. A number of friends have since joined the business, and last year the Jacobses made four of them partners, giving each 5 percent of the company. The founders hold the remaining 80 percent. "These aren't outsiders who came in all of a sudden saying they could get us from A to Z," says Bert. "They are our brothers and sisters in this thing, and their blood, sweat, and tears continue to pour into it."
By contrast, Life Is Good has no formal board of advisers, and the Jacobses aren't eager to create one. They readily seek expertise on narrow questions (the optimal square footage for company stores, for example) but generally shrug off broader, strategic counsel. Their conversation is peppered with sentences that begin "People told us…" followed by a summary of the advice: "Don't waste time distributing through mom-and-pops," "Don't locate your flagship store on Newbury Street," "Do spend money on an advertising campaign." These stories all end the same way--the Jacobses buck conventional wisdom and their own judgment proves correct.
The three most important things to a marketer are positioning, positioning, and positioning. The Jacobses have carefully staked out their rung on the marketplace ladder: premium but not exclusive. Life Is Good products cost about 20 percent more than middle-of-the-pack offerings. Life Is Good T-shirts, for example, are $20 at retail compared with an average $15 or $16 for most competitors. The company wholesales those shirts for $10 and spends about $6 producing them. "We'd like that to be closer to $5, but we use the best cotton we can get, it's double-reinforced stitching, and we garment-dye the product to give it a weathered look," says Bert. Margins are similar or better on other products, with the lowest being 40 percent and the highest 70 percent. Headwear and jewelry, which was introduced last year, are especially profitable.
The decision to buy and sell quality is an example of the Jacobses' defiance of expert advice. "Smart people that we worked with said, 'Guys, your message is what's selling shirts, and the graphics and the colors. Put it on a Fruit of the Loom and you'll make three bucks more every shirt," says John. "But we want this to be people's favorite shirt and we want it to still be their favorite shirt 10 years from now. It won't be if it's got holes and the collar's stretched out."
Life Is Good manufactures products around the world; most of its apparel is made in Peru. The Jacobses anticipate critics will observe that life isn't so good for unemployed textile workers in the United States, but argue that they are providing jobs for people without a safety net who would otherwise be much worse off.
Preserve Main Street. The ubiquity of its products notwithstanding, Life Is Good doesn't want to be Starbucks. The Jacobses detest the homogenization of retail that is turning downtowns into Stepford zones and possess an abiding affection for the mom-and-pops that have always been their backbone. Rather than Gap-ify, they plan to open no more than five to 10 corporate stores in total.
