In the hall outside the factory, there is a plaque that reads "Area 51 Research Lab"--Clark's tongue-in-cheek reference to the U.S. Air Force's secret test site for developing new aircraft. Push open the Invention Factory's heavy door and you walk into a room full of equipment, including a force tester that can measure the impact of a 150-pound soldier jumping out of a helicopter wearing a 100-pound pack; a custom-designed treadmill with a bumpy surface, designed to simulate the effect of roots and rocks on a hiker's feet; and a machine that can make a shoe "walk" 15,000 steps.
In this lab, Clark and his assistants set about creating a new shoe that would work for trail runners and their extreme athlete counterparts, "sky runners"--athletes who run marathons on rough terrain at 13,000 feet. At the time, there were a number of trail running shoes available, but Clark believed they were dressed-up road running shoes, not shoes designed for the problems athletes encounter in the woods: "Nobody had taken a clean piece of paper and said, What does a trail runner need? What would a trail running shoe do that these other shoes don't?"
To figure it out, Clark's designers videotaped athletes running road races and sprinting down trails. The differences were dramatic. "When you are running on a smooth road, even though there is lots of jarring, your arms are close to your body and you are quiet from your waist up, conserving energy," Clark says. "You watch trail runners and their arms are out here bouncing around so they don't fall down." Trail runners look awkward, Clark realized, because road running shoes have soft midsoles and hard outsoles, which work fine on a paved road but make trail runners flail. What does work? The opposite--a harder midsole and a softer outsole. Clark took his inspiration from watching car commercials. The differences in performance between various vehicles--"You don't take a Cadillac to the mountains," he says--would suggest you don't take a road running shoe up to the mountains. By contrast, the vehicles you do take off-road--rock crawlers--have soft tires and independent suspensions for flexibility and stability.
Clark figured that if a soft tire can keep a rock crawler upright, maybe a soft outsole--Timberland calls it "soft against the ground"--could do the same for a trail runner. He created a shoe with a soft, springy outsole. It's designed to keep you stable on uneven surfaces so that your body stays vertical and your ankle doesn't snap when you step on a moss-covered rock. "The first need of a trail runner," says Clark, dryly, "is to not fall on his ass." He and his team also made the shoe as light as possible. In a visitor's hand, the silver, black, and yellow shoe, despite 12 sizable, independent, rock-hugging lugs on the outsole, feels almost weightless.
Timberland hoped the shoe would appeal to an entirely different consumer, the kind of consumer that retail buyer Denise Friend has in mind when she goes shopping for REI. But that led to an interesting question: How would Timberland market this shoe? The obvious question was whether it made sense to put a brand name known for rugged, heavy boots on a 10.9-ounce running shoe. "We invented it," says Jeff Swartz. "There was a tremendous temptation to call the shoe Timberland. But we tested it, and consumers said, We don't believe it as much coming from a big brand like Timberland."
The company had already spent millions building the Mion brand. Did it want to spend millions more developing yet another brand? Or was there a chance it made more sense to go out and find an existing brand that would better fit the shoe. Clark thought about a tiny Boulder company that had been generating a lot of buzz. By 2005, GoLite's brilliantly colored, featherweight apparel and gear--not to mention the publicity generated by its sponsored athletes, including Andy Skurka, who used GoLite gear while hiking 7,000 miles across the continent--had made a big mark in the elite outdoor performance market.
Back in the lab, Clark holds up the featherweight shoe. Its heel sports a GoLite logo. "Every hiking boot with this kind of protection is labeled as being substantial," Clark says. "GoLite was the brand that said, No, going up in the mountains is more enjoyable if it's light. I looked at this shoe and thought, that's everything you need! GoLite is the right brand. It's the only existing brand that could tell our story, that stood for what we had to say. Buy the brand and you're done."
Did Kim and Coup Coupounas know how much Timberland wanted their brand? A smile flickers across Clark's broad face and disappears.
"No."
The smile reappears.
Kim and Coup weren't really looking to sell GoLite. When approached by business development guys, Coup would shoot back, "Sure, you got $50 million?" In the summer of 2005, though, they received a serious proposal from a large company (they decline to say which one). This pitch was serious enough, and large enough, for Coup and Kim to give it credence.
But at the time, in the fall of 2005, GoLite had neither investment banker nor investment book. Kim contacted investment banker David Goldblum, and despite the couple's reservations--that the brand wasn't fully baked, that the company wouldn't get the value it deserved--they hastily put a book together. In it, they asserted that they did not want to sell--unless it was to a large strategic buyer that would supply the fuel to help them scale up dramatically. They shopped the company around a bit, bringing the book to Timberland, which had already approached them about the brand. Coup and Kim met with Ken Pucker and outlined their aspirations. It was a short conversation. When it came to valuation, says Pucker, "we were in different Zip codes."
