Channel Mastery - Ep.185: Tim Parr, CEO + Founder of CADDIS

CADDIS

FOUNDING, AGE BUSINESS, D2C + OMNICHANNEL, LIFESTYLE BRANDING, + pandemic growth

featuring

Tim Caddis is the CEO and Founder of CADDIS, an eyewear brand that crushes age stereotypes. He has founded new companies and worked for some of the most respected brands in the apparel and specialty sporting goods industries. Lifestyle brands such as Patagonia, L.L. Bean, Filson, Kona, and many more have trusted his methods and guidance on significant issues that steer ships over long periods of time. He has been asked to conduct lectures at the Stanford School of Design, the San Francisco Academy of Art, the California College of Arts, Outdoor Retailer, FlyFishing Retailer, and Interbike.

show highlights

We’re delighted to introduce Tim Parr, CEO, and Founder of CADDIS, to the show as we evaluate the founding story of his eyewear brand - an online direct-to-consumer platform, business wholesaler, and brick-and-mortar store. We discuss turning a product into a platform by going against the grain in the “age business” and how the market is reacting.

In this episode, we dive into the fear of aging that helps drive Tim and the business, data around the 50 plus age market of consumers, growing an omnichannel, and more. “We want to build the world's best lifestyle aging brand,” and why a self-identifier brand (like YETI) can grow even during a global pandemic.

Tim gleams insight into the brand consciousness of CADDIS and how their glasses are ultimately helping people be themselves.

Kristin Carpenter: Welcome back to another episode of the Channel Mastery Podcast. I'm absolutely delighted to introduce Tim Parr to you today, the founder and CEO of CADDIS, an eyewear company for people like me. Welcome to the show.
Tim Parr: Thanks for having me.
Kristin: Well, I really couldn't resist to reach out and reconnect with you because we've been in the same circle, my entire career. And I am such a huge fan of this sunglass company. So I'm going to give a shout out to Rich Hill, who literally I was on a video called him, I'm like, “where did you get those?” And he gave me the whole story. And I know he's a huge fan as well. And then Dustin Robertson also was telling me how great it is. I now have a huge collection of them. I buy them for my family, and I had to have you on because this is your latest, but a highly meaningful reinvention. And I just think you have a lot of runway here. So I really wanted to bring you on to talk about everything you're doing nice.
Tim: Thanks. And I'm fan of both of those people. That's great to hear that we run in the same circles.
Kristin: They're awesome. I'm going to go ahead, and I'd love for you to give some of your background. Because a lot of people might know you as far back as Swobo, and I just really would like you to catch us all up, and then let's talk about how you hatched the idea of CADDIS and how you got here eight years later.
Tim: Okay.
Kristin: Let's start by, just tell us about your past.
Tim: I feel like I should be laying down on a couch. So, Swobo goes into the way back machine for sure. That goes back ... my, this is scary, like 30 years I think-
Kristin: Ya that is scary.
Tim: ... 8Is when that was incubated. That was my first foray into probably professional career period, early twenties maybe, mid twenties, I can't remember. But we were on a mission to make the bicycle this cool iconic urban icon. So it was taking what everyone knew of the bicycle, which came from a very athletic point of view, and then saying, it's got so much more beyond that for transportation, for self-expression, for independence. So let's tap into those things and let's do an apparel line that embodies all of that. And we used bike messengers, and it was very urban centric. And then later on we incorporated bicycles into the apparel, and that was the birth of Swobo, which was where I cut my teeth on a lot of stuff. Just learning the ins and outs of business, and brands, and how to execute. After that, what happened after that? After that, I went to Patagonia actually.
Kristin: Ok. I didn't know that you went to Patagonia.
Tim: It was actually the same week that I sold Swobo, I got a call from Michael Crook who was the CEO of Patagonia at the time. And I flew down, met with them and they had ... Yvon had bought a brand called WaterGirl…
Kristin: Yes I remember.
Tim: ... Which was a women's surf apparel. And I was brought to fix it.
Kristin: Got it.
Tim: Generally speaking. I was there about a year. I was fortunate enough to work with Yvon on a bunch of stuff and we had a great team, turned it around and then came back home to Northern California.
Kristin: Awesome. So you were at Toledo by the Bay for a year?
Tim: Mm-hmm.
Kristin: That's what we call it.
Tim: I've never heard it to refer to that, but yeah.
Kristin: That's awesome. And then what did you do after that? So you returned to San Francisco, and that was probably during early two thousands, I would imagine?
Tim: Yep, that's exactly what it was. And started a brand strategy consultancy. Fixing big problems, or big questions about steering over long periods of time was what I got brought in to do. And had a lot of fun with that, worked with great clients like Kona mountain bikes, and had great clients like L.L. Bean, did more work with Patagonia and it was just super interesting work. That was really fulfilling for a while.
Kristin: But you were aging and your eyesight was getting worse.
Tim: Yeah, and then I needed it. I needed glasses. But what really happened? So then in between there, then I stopped doing that and I formed a bluegrass band and traveled the Western United States playing music. And then in that period, is when I needed reading glasses. At the time I was a musician, and I was down in Malibu, and I was inside an optometry store just explaining this problem of, my phone's fonts are getting fuzzy, I can't see those. I've run out of arm length to move things away from my eyeballs. The solution is reading glasses, and the offering was not great, I guess is the short way to say of that. I did a little bit of homework of, well, what is this thing called reading glasses and what's optical. And I came to the conclusion that if there just wasn't anything out in the marketplace, especially coming from the background, that myself and people who I grew up with, we have certain expectations when it comes to purchasing things. It's not about the 100% rational parts of the decision, there's irrational parts of the decision that play into it. If you put that in the context, a super rational decision would've been to go to Walgreens and spend $8 on something and walk out and put it on your face. Which is somewhat unacceptable if you were born and raised in board sport culture in California throughout the eighties and nineties. We just don't do that. That's how the idea of CADDIS came to be.
Kristin: And from the female side of it, as we're probably your number one customer over here. We also don't like to go into clothing stores, or airport shops and pick out a Peeper's hair, which are just a slightly polished, sorry Peeper, slightly polished turd version of the Walgreens.
Tim: Right. So there's definitely a two degree of separation.
Kristin: Yes.
Tim: But they're just turning the crank on stuff.
Kristin: Yeah, and it's chintzy. It's a little bit heavier than what you were buying at Walgreens, but literally going through pairs of those like crazy, and they scratch and all of that. Anyway, we got all that out of the way. So now you have this idea, you see some wide space that you could go in, and create something cool. What I love about this part of your story, because you've gone through everything you have in your career, you really do know who you are and who you'd be selling to in terms to your peer group. But you did it in a really ... you kept going the way you normally would, but then you stopped and checked yourself because you're like, why am I doing this? So I would love for you to share that moment, or that timeframe at the start of this brand, and where you were, what you were doing, and how that came to be, what was the light you saw?
Tim: And it's funny, because a lot of it is almost like cobbler's son wears no shoes. Because I came from a background of brand strategy, and I hadn't checked all the boxes of what I would instruct other people to do when creating a meaningful experience/product for any market. I realized that there was a wide space for the product, the product that I was looking for didn't exist then. Job one, was to get product design, four or five designs that I created got packaging together. And then there was a process of raising money, which just was terrible. It was terrible, no one understood what we were doing. No one understood the whole with the demographic. And no one understood like, well, why does this product need to exist? So they didn't get it. And probably 30, 40 meetings into it I was thinking like, this is fine, and I'm into it because it's creative. I can get the product out, I see the wide space, I see the market, I can fill it.
But it always goes back to, so what? Like, who cares? You can bring something to market, so can anyone else. And eventually, it wasn't resonating 100%, and I couldn't put my finger on why? This is in retrospect, I had this one meeting and it was literally my 40th meeting. I'm a living cliche of packing your bag and going from door to door and getting a thousand no's. This particular one, this venture capital, it was like looking at the box, I get it, I get the product, I get the positioning of the product. I understand that it's a new point of view, flips the box over, and there's a quote about aging on the bottom of the box. And I'd even really attest it to that. It was something I slapped on there in the 11th hour because it was something that just irritated me the week before, was this whole sixties and new fifties, fifties and new fou... I'm like, what is that all about? Can't we just stop that?, And why can't 60 be 60 and 50 be 50? I don't get it. So there's this quote on the bottom of the box. And I go, well, I told the story of, I'm just irritated with 60 is 50, 50 is like ... I don't get it. And why can't we just be the age whatever we are, and be in the moment of whatever it is that we want to be? And she looks at me and says, you can't do that. The entrepreneur I'm like, tell me more of what I cannot do so it really struck a nervous. And she told me that people want to believe that they're 15 years younger than they actually are. And they never want to be reminded of their age. Meeting was over at that point. Like done, pack up my bike messenger bag, my five boxes like, well, here we go again. And when I got to the bottom of the steps and I hit the street, and I don't believe in aha moments. I really don't, but this was an aha moment.
Kristin: The universe shock the brick at your head, right?
Tim: Exactly. It totally did. And I was like, if there was so much fear about this particular subject, what an awesome thing to go attack. And within five seconds, it was, we are not in the reading glasses market. We are in the age business. And if that was such a negative response to the conversation of age, the punk rock side of me was like, that's what we're going to do. Then we're going to go after this conversation about age. And now all of a sudden, within five minutes, everything got way more exciting. Because we went from a product to a platform. It's like, well, we can turn the crank and make these, we can design these glasses and everything's great, and they're cool and blah, blah, blah. But now that we have this other component of, we're going to change the way Americans think about aging, that is a BHAG. And that is worth getting out of bed for. From that moment on, I just had energy, and to this day it still drives me.
Kristin: The fear that you saw in her eyes is really what's driving you here. It's like, you're really on a mission to show people they really don't have to be afraid because? Tell us why? What is the platform?
Tim: For me personally, I need something to punch up to. And if you go back to some of my other endeavors, there was always something that I had that I was trying to buck the trend, or go against the grain on what was understood as being the way things should be. And this was a big one. How people think about aging. It's a perfect why.
Kristin: This happened ... you've been around for eight years, but you told me more recently, you've been dropping the clutch on growing distribution, and building this platform, and putting branding to it, like a look and feel and something to raise your hand and join up with. When was this meeting, and when was a big moment happen in that eight year trajectory?
Tim: We started selling product four years ago. And it was before we started selling our first product. There was no sales, there was no history, so we created it from day one with this platform of aging. And then when you start going down that road and start peeling away what that market looks like, it's massive.
Kristin: And let's talk about that, because that was my next place we were going to go, is the book that you're going to get into. It's not even a target market, it's a movement, but tell us about, when you say it's massive, help us understand what you mean.
Tim: Really big.
Kristin: And it's not so much from a revenue Standpoint, right. It's-
Tim: No, it is.
Kristin: ... Sure. But then the impression and the impact you're making is also really big. The p-
Tim: Let's just talk about the nerdy numbers behind it.
Kristin: ... Let's do that.
Tim: Let's do that. So if you're talking about consumer products for the 50 plus market, it's an $8 trillion market.
Kristin: That's with a B, folks.
Tim: With a B. They control 83% of household income. Huge. They are, one out of three Americans is over the age of 50, millennials and eight years will be 50 years old. So it's a big market getting bigger. They're controlling 50% of all consumer spending in United States. And then here's the kick, because like, that's all big. And you just go big down the line. Here's the kicker though, 7% of marketing dollars are directed towards this market.
Kristin: And a huge percentage is directed toward enabling this market to pretend like they're 15 years younger, which isn't really resonating with us.
Tim: No. Anti-aging like, fill in the blank. That's 93% of marketing dollars that go towards everything else.
Kristin: That's incredible.
Tim: Its mean.
Kristin: It's super cool. You said in our rehearsal that you've been talking with this audience for 30 years. This is a huge swath of people, but there's your people, I would say board sports people, entrepreneurs, you have a distinct brand that you've drawn and grown around you. But this is much bigger than that. So is this the first time you've actually leaned over that cliff and looked into the chasm like, I have something that actually could really positively impact and make a bunch of money off five, or 50 times the amount of people that I'm talking to, that I've grown up with in my career?
Tim: It's funny because both you and I come from specialty sporting. And it seems like in my career, the holy grail was always to use that core to transcend that particular size of the market to go into a much larger market. Lack of Patagonia. People who buy at Patagonia are not climbing Everest each week. That's always been something that's ingrained in me. When we started this, and we started with a very focused target on who we wanted. And it was as far as spokespeople, or when we're seeding product, or when we got wholesale, it was ex-pro surfers, it was musicians, it was artists, fashioned thought leaders. So there was always that hyper focus on the center. But then to your point, this is currently bigger and we'll just continue to get bigger than I could have imagined. But the tactics are all the same.
Kristin: So you're still thinking you can create something special at a nucleus level that will be something that much broader audiences will want to tie themselves to?
Tim: I think we've done it. It's not a finite thing. The circles keep on getting bigger and bigger. Case in point, we go from Donovan Frankenreiter, or Lisa Anderson, the ex-pro surfer, to Mr. Cartoon, famous tattoo artist in Los Angeles, to Katie Caruth, who is calling us and saying, she wants to get involved. And then we look on Instagram and you got people like Gwyneth Paltrow plugging us half a dozen times, and talking about the mission, and the product, and Matthew McConaughey, sports figures. It just goes on and on, but I truly believe it starts with just hyper focus, and it's something as a company that we need to focus on. Because as the whole thing gets bigger, there's a tendency to forget those early lessons. And I think they're just as important as a hundred million dollar company, as you are a $1 million company. I just don't think that the rules change.
Kristin: Interesting. What an exercise and discipline this must be because you have it. Just that you could go so much bigger probably without as much of a focus and a discipline faster.
Tim: Right. And then it depends on what do we want to build.
Kristin: Right. What do you want to build?
Tim: We want to build the world's best lifestyle aging brand.
Kristin: Awesome. That's amazing. I just got goose bump. I really did, that is good.
Tim: Think of it this way. Imagine if you can make aging cool. I don't mean to sound superficial about using the cool word because I hate the word. But sometimes it's just hard to find a good substitute for it. But if you were to achieve that, think of all the down river positive effects that could happen with mental health, physical health, workplace ageism, the list goes on and on of the physical and mental health that people can exhibit when they don't feel those ageism effects.
Kristin: That's incredible. It's really true even just thinking about it personally. For me as an athlete, bumping up to a new age group, the only benefit of that is I might be able to beat more people because I'm the younger one in group. But honestly, I'm still looking back, I'm trained to look back at the younger categories and wish. Like, I wish I knew what I knew now, but could be that age. And I think what you're thinking is, you're going to hopefully create a permission, or a lens for us to look through that's like, actually, there's no should, there's no captain hindsight, this is all about where you are now, and where you can go. That's a very different prospect.
Tim: Yes. It's a different prospect. In fact, today, I don't know if you're familiar with Chip Conley?
Kristin: Yeah.
Tim: He does a lot of work in this field, and he's been on this mission for a while. I'm on his email list and he sent a really great quote from a book that's about to come out, where there's a direct correlation to how we view aging, and at the cellular level, how we physically age. So if you have a negative point of view about aging, it's a descending trajectory, with health and relationships, and anything else that you want to throw into that bucket, then your health and your longevity will be a negatively affected. And there's research that shows if you have a positive outlook, it's only going to get better. And this is at the cellular physical level, your life improves.
Kristin: I have heard you have to be very careful with the words that you use because it can affect your wellbeing on a cellular level. And this must be tied to that. And Chip Conley who is from the Boutique Hotel chain has written books, and I think he teaches at Stanford now, will link it in the notes, but I remember it was some kind of midlife career path thing that he was creating. Wasn't he?
Tim: Yeah. He started a company group retreat called the Modern Elder Academy, which is MEA. And the first one was down in Baja and now he has one in Santa Fe. But again, he's been on this good and early, and it's a good email list to sign up for and get interesting facts about.
Kristin: I'm already wanting to go to that. It's just the Fe, it's only a little bit of ways from here in Durango.
Tim: There you go.
Kristin: That's cool. What about the book Super Age? Is that the same book he was talking about? Or is this a different one? Because you and I were talking about this, and I'll again put the links in, and you're featured in there. So can you talk a little bit about that.
Tim: That's that came out this week, and it's a great read. It talks about this demographic, and it talks about how culture views people 50 plus, and how it has a negative effect on things. I'm only halfway through the book, admittedly, I got to the other half to go, but-
Kristin: It just came out this week, it's okay.
Tim: ... It's a great read. That is fantastic.
Kristin: But I believe that has it featured in that.
Tim: They gave us a nice plug for sure.
Kristin: That's cool.
Tim: Talking about a consumer products and design being specifically designed for this market, rather than have design and marketing target 20 to 30 something with the assumption that you already have a 50 year old, and a 50 year old's always going to aspire to be a 25 year old. So you put 25 and 30 year olds in your marketing. And therefore just by osmosis, you're just going to get the 50 year old, which is not true. But that's how marketing psychographics actually work. Because we both have sat through those meetings and when you sit and you really analyze the 27 year old, you spend 45 minutes on it, then the 28 to 42 year old, you spend another 45 minutes on it. And then when you get to age 45 in those meetings, you just put average household income.
Kristin: That's right. That's really true. That's crazy when you think about it.
Tim: It is.
Kristin: So we're talking about trillions of dollars everybody. And I would be remiss if we didn't talk about channels, seeing how this is the Channel Mastery Podcast. I would love to talk about ... I made the assumption that you were a D2C brand first, but I was wrong. Can you talk a little bit about how in the past four years ... where did you get out of the gate and why? And how are you evolving? Because you have some pretty cool stuff on the horizon.
Tim: We did come out of the gate online with e-commerce and D2C, and maybe like a month or two later, we started adding key accounts. Mainly surf accounts down in Southern California, or high end fashion accounts scattered between LA, or New York or something. But it was very limited because we didn't have a lot of people to really do it correctly. But it's always been part of how we wanted to grow the overall business. It is omnichannel. So we started D2C, our wholesale business is probably... I think we're up to 500 doors across the country. And then we opened up our first door in the west village of New York two months ago, three months ago, something like that. And we have plans to expand all three of those channels.
Kristin: Can you name a couple of other brands that you really think are today doing omnichannel well?
Tim: Who does omni well? Or Warby does? But Warby doesn't do wholesale. I'm a fan of ... I don't know who does exactly wholesale retail in D2C. We're pretty odd to do wholesale. As you have seen, there's a lot of brands coming down the pipe that are starting to open up their own stores. I'm a huge fan of YETI, the coolers, and God, who else does it really well?
Kristin: Just out of curiosity, can you name a few of the reasons why you're a huge fan of YETI? Because I have a feeling I know what you're going to say, but maybe I don't. And I think our audience could learn from this.
Tim: There's a couple reasons. One is, and maybe I can relate to it. I'm guessing, because I don't know them at all, but when they were trying to get that company off the ground and were their coolers like $500? The original ones. I can only imagine what those meetings were when some said, we're going to sell $500 coolers. And then someone asked, well, how big is the $500 cooler market? The answer is, well, there isn't one, which probably sent them down a hundred different paths to try and find someone who really understood their vision. The fact that they're able to create that category is really impressive. And then to take that which originally started as Saltwater Fly Fisherman Coolers in the south-
Kristin: That's The Polish major in the room.
Tim: ... To take that. And then all of a sudden to transcend the design language and the brand attributes into things that people in Manhattan crave, the kitchenware, and whether it be the thermos-styled. I don't know what you call this these days, but all those different types of things, the last I read that now accounts for 60% of their revenue.
Kristin: Wow. Just brand accessory.
Tim: Just to make that type of brand extension success, I think is really cool and not easy, and they crushed it.
Kristin: Well, and I think I just want to state, maybe I'm being captain obvious here, but it's a self identifier. Just like your company is, just like, your product is like, if I buy that or use that or wear CADDIS, it says something about me. If I buy Patagonia, it says something about me. And I feel like that's always been true, but going through our friend the pandemic, I think that people really realize, this is more important to me than ever. Number one, having these things to help me identify with who I want to be in the world, even though I may not be there yet. That aspiration has become even more important to consumers. And if you throw in something that emotionally connects with them from like a cause standpoint, because they're seeing nothing changing with the entities and institutions they normally look to, to create that change on their behalf, not happening. So they're looking to brands even more for that. Knowing that, you have a huge cause just in who you are, just in being in the business of making aging cool. That's a cause in itself. But do you feel like you need to add any other cause, or give back other than that? Because of the way people are wired today around these identity brands that they love.
Tim: Do I feel like I have to? No. But do we? Yes. I think everything that we do comes from a authentic point of view, or we just don't do it. The other thing that we do is we give a big chunk of percentage of each sale to a music education.
Kristin: See, as your number one customer, I didn't know that.
Tim: No-
Kristin: It's crazy.
Tim: ... I know. It's also like another ... we'll eventually get there. We're in the process of launching a separate nonprofit called Music Farming with a group of people. And I learned this from Yvon. It just got to be too big, too fast and internally dealing with that is a lot. So we created ... we're in the process of, it'll be done in like two months, but it's called Music Farming. And so CADDIS will cut checks, and Music Farming will distribute those funds to music education programs.
Kristin: That's really cool. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing that. And then I-
Tim: It's awesome that you didn't know. There's a part of me that's like, that's cool.
Kristin: ... And it's something else to discover. Like, here's another layer that furthers the emotional connection.
Tim: Good.
Kristin: I think that's really cool. Well, congratulations. You've been around for eight years selling for four, you have 30 plus employees. Honestly, you have this huge runway ahead of you in terms of the positive impact you can create with wellbeing, seriously. And then you did share one thing that I really would be remiss if I didn't bring up in our interview here today when we were rehearsing is, you said something around one of the testimonials you got that really has been something that keeps you really excited, and I'll share what it is, and maybe you can think of a few others. But you said to me, and it really resonated with me. You get emails that say, I put on my CADDIS eyewear and I feel like I have a shield. I've been thinking about that, I was like, what does that even mean? And then the next morning I was like, I think I'm starting to understand what that means. And it is true. I'm wearing mine right now. I have all these other pairs and it's mood based. And it is a shield, it really is. It enables me to be who I want to be just putting them on. And I don't have to talk about, or share maybe the things that aren't quite there yet. I don't know if that's accurate, but that's really powerful.
Tim: And we've heard it from more than a handful of people almost using the same language, which is super interesting. That's consumer products, and if you are in the brand, consciousness, which I probably am overly into it. There's nothing more that you can ask for, is be of some assistance in someone's life beyond the physical thing, and to be able to just add something positive to the world and people can see better.
Kristin: It's so true. I just got another piece of that. It's a shield from maybe being older than I feel like I am. That's really what it's shielding. I think that's what it is, it's directly tied to what I've been told my entire adult life about what is about to happen to me when I turned 50. It's not true, and so putting these on honestly, is a shield to that. So I think I might have just put it together for myself. Oddly enough.
Tim: I'm sure it's very personal for all those people who wrote in what they're referring to. I won't even want to guess, but I can say that I get it.
Kristin: For sure. Well, I'm really so grateful that you came up with this latest iteration. I absolutely love this brand.
Tim: Thanks.
Kristin: I'm also just so heartened that you immediately were okay wanting to come on the podcast, and you are so approachable and open and it's really inspired me. I just can't wait to see where you take this, and what your team does. And thank you so much for sharing your vision and your story here today.
Tim: Well, thanks for having me.
Kristin: And more to come. I can't wait to hear how everything unrolls here…
Tim: Never a dull moment over here.
Kristin: ... Yep. Thank you so much. And then tell us the website really quick before I disappear.
Tim: The website is caddislife, C-A-D-D-I-S, life.com. You can find us on the corner of Christopher and Bleecker in the West Village. As a friend of mine put it once, it's on the corner of yes and yes. And-
Kristin: I love it.
Tim: ... And it has some great retailers. We have 500 retailers currently at the moment across the US. And it's everything from home furnishings, to surf, to apparel. So look for us.
Kristin: And there's more breaking mortar right here in the future with you. So maybe that's when we'll have you back.
Tim: Great. Looking forward to it.
Kristin: All right. Thank you again.
Tim: Thanks Kristin