Retail Relates
Welcome to Retail Relates — where commerce gets personal.
Each episode brings you inside the world of global commerce — across retail, consumer services, hospitality, and brand marketing — through powerful human stories and the ever-evolving forces shaping what we buy, why we buy, and how we connect.
From entrepreneurs and icons to industry veterans and rising changemakers, we spotlight those redefining how people lead, create, and connect in a fast-moving world.
Hosted by our roundtable of industry experts, we offer a 360° view of the marketplace through honest conversations, lived experience, and practical insights that resonate.
Let’s get started — this is where the story of modern commerce comes to life.
Retail Relates
Where Grit Meets Growth — Jeremy & Lila Stewart on the Hari Mari Journey
What does it take to turn a flip flop into a lifestyle brand? For Jeremy and Lila Stewart, it meant grit, resilience, and a belief that comfort, color, and community could reshape an industry.
Inspired by their time in Indonesia and frustrated by stagnant footwear options, the Stewarts launched Hari Mari in 2012. What started with crayon drawings and focus groups quickly ran into real-world challenges: supply chain failures, defective shipments, and even counterfeit sales undermining their launch. But rather than quit, they doubled down—building the brand grassroots, one store and one customer at a time.
In this episode, Jeremy and Lila share lessons from the trenches: why perseverance matters more than glamour, why early failures can be fuel, and how community—from their internal team to philanthropic commitments—has been central to Hari Mari from day one.
From their first Nordstrom order to Joanna Gaines and Bradley Cooper sightings, their story is a masterclass in authentic brand building. If you’re an entrepreneur, retailer, or simply someone chasing a vision, this conversation offers both inspiration and hard-won advice.
Guest Bios
Jeremy Stewart co-founded Hari Mari in 2012 after careers in political consulting, global communications, and media production. He previously served as co-founder & CEO of Margate House Media in Indonesia, VP at Vox Global in Washington, D.C., and Director at Allyn Media in Dallas.
Lila Stewart, a Dallas native, brings experience in wholesale, PR, retail, and sales management. Before Hari Mari, she worked in live music sponsorships at Anschutz Entertainment Group. Today, she has helped place Hari Mari in nearly 1,000 retail locations across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas, and secured media coverage in VOGUE, Forbes, WIRED, Travel + Leisure, and more.
Have you ever been curious as to what it takes to turn a humble flip-flop into a premium lifestyle brand, one built on comfort, color and community? In this episode, we go inside Hari Amari's founder's playbook the day one comfort design rule, the early supply chain punch to the gut, and how they recovered the door-by-door hustle that built their first 45 stores, and the steady, even-keel mindset kept the mission moving. I'm Rich Honeyball, and I'm joined today by two of our co-hosts Jamie Lynn Curley, who is our brand storyteller, and Guy Cortin, who is our supply chain and tech guru. Together, we dig into how the Stuarts turned setbacks into systems and systems into a brand that people are proud to wear. Jeremy Stewart co-founded Harimari in 2012 after careers in political consulting, global communications and media production. He previously served as co-founder and CEO of Margate House Media in Indonesia, vice president of Vox Global in Washington DC and director at Allen Media in Dallas. Leila Stewart, also a co-founder of Harimari, is a Dallas native who brings in wholesale PR, retail and sales management. Before Hari Mari, she worked in live music sponsorships at Anschutz Entertainment Group. Today, she has helped place Hari Mari in over a thousand retail locations across the United States, canada, mexico and the Bahamas and has secured media coverage in Vogue, forbes, wired, travel, leisure and more.
Rich:What you're going to hear right away isn't just the origin story, it's how they operationalized it, translating a clear point of view into fit standards, color stories, retail partner alignment and a cadence of wins that multiply. Let's jump into this episode of Retail Relates with Harimari, co-founders Jeremy and Lila Stewart. Welcome to another episode of Retail Relates. I am joined today by two of our Lustrous co-hosts Guy, Good to see you again. Good to see you, rich. And Jamie Lynn, great to see you as well. Great to see you, rich. And, as I introduced them in the intro, I'm very excited to have Lila and Jeremy here from Harimari. Hey guys.
Lila:Hi, thanks for having us.
Rich:So I am going to go ahead and get started. This is going to be as organic a conversation as possible, which I think you will appreciate. We'll have a little bit of fun, but want to find out a little bit more about you and, obviously, harimari and what you do. Now we're used to single guests, so when I ask the question, I kind of need both of you to jump in, or one of you can take the lead, but we have your bios and we know the history of Harimari. The first question we always like to ask are what are the three pivotal moments, personal or professional, that brought you to where you are sitting with us today in this opulent podcast studio?
Jeremy:Oh, there's so many. You know. I think one of the first pivotal moments to getting us here was, for us, just time spent together living in Asia. We started off. Lila and I lived in Indonesia for four years. We had the inkling of this idea when we were living there of potentially starting a flip-flop brand based in Dallas, and we were having this pretty healthy disagreement on what to do after Indonesia. And she wanted to leave, I wanted to stay and you know, it's just kind of one of those godlike moments where a terrorist bombed our favorite restaurant in Jakarta where we ate, and for your listeners who are married, you know the look your wife gives you and you give them back and you don't need to say anything and you know that you're going to do exactly what she had wanted in the first place. That was one of the first moments that brought us back to Dallas to begin this journey here with Hard Mart.
Lila:And to echo. But also add on to that. It was a pretty life-changing experience and we were there for a while and inundated in the culture and saw some really incredibly sad things but some amazing things and it was just a an opportunity to see the world from a completely different perspective. And so, after being there for the time that we were coming back, we were just changed humans and wanted to do something completely and totally different. Jeremy was in politics, I was in the music business, and just jumping back back into those two things was was of zero interest, zero desire after having the experience that we had abroad. And so it was you. I know you asked for three, but that's the big one, that's the big whammy. I think it'd be tough to come up with that with some other ones, because that was pretty pivotal for us for so many different reasons.
Rich:I think I can take that one and parlay it into. I'm really curious in how music and politics translated into a flip flop brand in Dallas.
Lila:That's a great question. We're still trying to figure that out.
Jeremy:I can tell you on politics, it was actually a pretty natural transition. You know, one thing we figured out in political consulting we would be part of the people who go into foreign countries and we'd poll and message test and research and kind of put together campaign strategy. But really we're kind of the media teams in campaigns and we always looked at politicians as walking consumer goods before we even had the idea for Harimari. You dress them up, you package them, you attach messages to them, you put them, put them in the right distribution avenues and put some you know, modestly good marketing behind them. And if you do it the correct way and you start with a good candidate or a good product, you, you know, tend to have success if you kind of, you know, follow those basic rules.
Jeremy:So really, you know, starting Harimari from that perspective wasn't, wasn't too much of a stretch and we knew we wanted a consumer good, we knew we wanted to get into consumer goods and just doing a little bit of research, we were, yeah, we were passionate about flip-flops, but but just kind of, after some cursory research on how big the market was for the for that and for, for sandals and for flip-flops globally, us, and knowing we could bring something different and unique and innovative to the table. That's what really kind of got us going. I don't know about music.
Lila:Well, I don't play an instrument and I don't sing, but I was on the sales side of the music business.
Lila:I used to work for a company called AEG Live and so when we decided to do this, and really there was a bunch of reasons why and we went out of flip-flops and came home and had to buy some new pairs and literally the same pairs that were hanging on the wall in 2007,. We're still hanging on that same wall, three, four years later, maybe different iterations of black and brown, and I we always tell people that was kind of like our Oprah aha moment that should we look into this business? Should? Why is this so stagnant? Why is there nothing new or fresh? Why is it only black and brown? And so, having that kind of moment, combined with the passion to want to go do it and to bring something fresh and fun to the space, and with me having a sales background and Jeremy having a marketing background, it was very yin and yang and so, kind of right out of the gates, we knew our lanes. We may not have always stayed in them but, you know.
Lila:So that's how it came to be.
Rich:In a very quick nutshell, yeah, and I like the music angle and the let's try to reinvent. I don't know that I want to make the political and flip-flop connection, so I'm just going to avoid that one Cause I could see both in Guy and Jamie Lynn that they were like OK, can we go there? Can we go there?
Guy:Sorry, you can have one flip flop that's red and one flip flop that's blue. Right, there you go.
Jeremy:Well, that's the beauty. Of international politics is there are no red and blues. It's all different sides.
Rich:So let's throw the script out a little bit and talk before we kind of dive into the lesson part. Talk about that kind of first inspiration of Hari Mari and flip-flops and you're back in Dallas and where that was born.
Jeremy:We moved back and it's like the idea was there, the seed was planted. Lila was pregnant with our first child at the time and so I came to her one day. I was like, hey, I think I'm going to start a flip-flop company. And she was like that's great. You can't, the audience probably can't see right now, but she's patting me on the back, she's like you go have fun with that. And so really I was kind of R&Ding it solo for I don't know six months, something like that.
Jeremy:I started focus grouping people here in Dallas. I went out to all the college campuses and I handed out flyers for free pizza and 50 bucks if you came to our focus group and you just started gauging people's opinions, attitudes on flip-flops, because I didn't know where we could have an effect. I didn't know how to change the flip-flop or make it different or make it unique or make it better really. And so those focus groups, I hired a buddy to moderate, I sat behind the glass for three days and we focus group 100 people kind of ages 18 to 40. The key kind of takeaways from those three days were so invaluable because we didn't know if there was anything to improve upon, but we thought there was lylan.
Jeremy:I hated that little piece that goes between your first and second tone the pain it causes when you buy a new pair of flip-flops and you break them in. And funnily enough, in that focus group we have one of the of the respondents say I will never forget it because I'm a big fan of the Godfather the film series. And they said you know, trying on flip flops the first time is like being the mafia. They're like it's blood in, blood out. So if you bleed on your first pair of flip flops or with them on your toes, then you're going to be with that pair of flip flops for your life.
Jeremy:And so I think like kind of that moment you know, I knew that there was, there was something there and so kind of fast forward a few months and we put some really bad kind of crayon drawings together and sent them out to some factories that we wanted to work with or hope we could work with, and they sent us some samples and and I got the samples in the mail and I remember it was like this bright orange and white flip-flop probably the worst looking flip-flop I've ever seen, to be honest and I pulled it out of the box and Lila looked at it and she's like, well, I kind of want to do this too. And that's when Lila joined.
Lila:I'm such a visual person and I always tell people this sounds so silly. But seeing the product for the first time, my level of excitement just seems like bursting out of my skin, just wanting to go do this with him. And I also know that he's not a salesperson and I can't handle that side of it. And so that came on from that day. I was like let's go do this. That's how we got here.
Jeremy:Yeah, that was it, that was the beginning.
Guy:So if I could just jump in real quick. So that's really fascinating and I'll freely give you guys a disclaimer and Rich knows this, and Jamie Lennon started to learn this too. Like I'm a supply chain guy, I've been in supply chain for 20. So when you guys start talking about factories and getting stuff like that just gets me perked up. But can you, how have you guys navigated that? Because obviously the big challenge for startups like yourselves, right, is it's great to be able to do a prototype, but then you've got to actually get some scale right, get some factories, get the landed cost handled, get the distribution handled and hopefully, knock on wood, you guys become even more successful. Now that probably just compounds itself, right? It's just something that a lot of I've seen this a lot, right, a lot of retailers who start, they kind of forget the supply chain side. They want to get their product, they want to do their design, they want to do their marketing. It's all fantastic.
Jeremy:And then all of a sudden, they're like oh, it's a great question.
Jeremy:It's a great point too because I think you're right, I think the supply chain is like an afterthought when people start a brand.
Jeremy:We have learned only by just crashing and burning several times and, you know, skinning our knees and kind of picking ourselves up and trying something different. I think that you know, just for example, on the very first order we placed, we had something like we bootstrapped the RMI ourselves first couple of years and we placed an order for 25,000, 25,000 pairs of sandals with and I got on a plane and, by the way, I went to visit about 10 different factories in China that I met on, like Alibaba, met those that expressed interest and would work kind of around the MOQ, the minimums that we could order, and so I got on a plane, I went and visited all 10. It's like you know, took a train around China for two weeks and pressed go with one that was, like you know, the most willing and the most eager and seemed like the most sincere, and so we placed an order of 25,000 pairs of flip flops with them and without a single PO against.
Jeremy:Yeah, flops with them Without a single PO against you. Yeah, with no demand. Who does that? And so Lyle's brother had just graduated from Texas Tech and he was kind of wondering what to do next. I'm like you're coming with me to China. I need somebody there to help me inspect and look over this PO and make sure it goes through, okay, with no hitch.
Jeremy:And so he and I flew to northern china and we watched every single pair go by on this conveyor belt and I know that like I'm gonna date myself here, but it was like laverne and shirley opening scene style, where all the beers are going by and they're, like you know, on either side that was him and me. You know, in like this, you know, freezing cold factory for 10 days, shivering with like parkas on and and we pull all these pairs off and you know they were defective and we put them next to us and the guy would come by and pick them up and take them to the trash, and you know, every hour or so. And we got back on this plane because we found so many defective pairs while we were there, got back on the plane high-fiving, like so excited that we had, and three months later the order arrives back in Dallas. They call us because Customs flagged our flip-flops for not having the right markings on them, which is another area that entrepreneurs probably don't think about too much when they should. We took and they said well, we can either do it ourselves. We can relabel all your flip-flops to 25,000 pairs It'll take about five months or you can bring your entire company down here and I looked at Lila. It's like our entire company, it's like two of us.
Jeremy:So we grabbed all of our friends and family and free pizza and beer is the theme of starting this company and flip flops and flip flops. And we grabbed a bunch of friends, went down to this, grabbed a pack and play to put our newly born daughter in, and went to this warehouse uh, outside of dallas and started opening up the boxes. One of our friends looked at us after he opened and took out the first pair and I'll never forget. He's like are the? Are the flip flops supposed to look like this? And the flip flop was literally bent in half. We're like oh my gosh. We started opening the rest of boxes. Well, it turns out the factory just put all the defective pairs that we had taken out right back into the order, even though they said they would remake them, and they shipped them to us.
Lila:It gets worse. The story is not over yet.
Jeremy:So the first order 40% of that order 10,000 pairs were totally defective and unsellable and they were so bad in fact we needed to get them like out of the country and so we chose a.
Jeremy:There was a local 501c3, I won't mention their name, but their sole business is shoes and donating shoes and so we met the CEO. We're so excited and and they helped us choose it you know he's a local guy too and helped us choose a couple of countries where we could donate all 10 000 pairs they wouldn't go to waste. We loaded you know truck, pulled up in our warehouse and we loaded all 10 000 pairs and and waved goodbye to it. And literally two weeks before we're due to launch on our own site where our pairs will retail for 60 bucks, we started getting pop-up advertisements for flash sales, selling our defective flip-flops for $3. That was the story of the launch of Harimari. But it all goes back to the supply chain and if you get your supply chain wrong, that first one is I'm sure it kills a lot of dreams a lot of brands.
Rich:The beauty of that story is, if there are students that are listening to this, many of them have dreams and aspirations of starting a brand and I think the percentage of students that are now reconsidering just jumped with that story, which is I'm not trying to discourage it, because obviously you guys have seen success, but you just cause some to think a little bit more about what they're going to do.
Guy:Oh, I was going to say I think it's. It's a. It's a I love. I don't love the stories. I appreciate the pain you guys went through, but you are, but I love the. It is a great example to me of all the things that a lot of entrepreneurs don't think about. And to your point, right where you just said, jeremy, is all of a sudden you're about to launch and you've got this dump on the market of your defective product. I see this all the time. I deal a lot of retours with other manufacturers who come out of China or Bangladesh or the Far East, and it's tough because it's one of those things where the quality control, the ability to understand everything you just mentioned Don't even get me started on all the problems people feel about getting products out and what you need to do in terms of bill of ladings and taxation rights and imports and all this. It's not the fun part, but if you can't get your product in, it's tough. So I appreciate the story. So, jamie Lynn, go ahead.
Jaime Lynn:I was just going to say how did you push through? You hit roadblock after roadblock after roadblock. Somebody just said let's just cut our losses and step away from this. But clearly you didn't. So what was the driving factor then?
Lila:Just sheer determination to make this work and we still have that same grit today. I mean, our challenges are different now and there will always be hurdles, but I mean I think our families and friends thought we legit were crazy when we told them we were starting this business to begin with, they did.
Jeremy:It's not even a joke. They basically told us you're the biggest idiots on earth for doing this.
Lila:In a really nice way.
Jeremy:We still love you, but you're idiots. There's a big piece of this.
Lila:It's like not only were we determined to make this work and were we excited and passionate about it, but there was another piece where we're like, well, we can't let them be right.
Jeremy:And I think we also just we're really good about just finding a way. And so, for example, when those sales popped up, lila like, I think, lila Seekler. She either wanted to be like an FBI agent or a lawyer in a different life, because she readily welcomes those types of situations, and so she literally went on some site to figure out the phone numbers for the owners of those websites that were putting up the flash sales, found them, called each one of them I think there were like five to eight or something like that and then sent them all cease and desist letters.
Lila:I got their cell phone numbers. I called them and told them hey, I have your address, I'm going to be on your front porch if you don't pull these down. It worked, I wasn't going to. I'm not that nuts.
Jeremy:So they all came down.
Lila:We don't know where they went, but we got them off.
Rich:Was there that moment where things started to turn in your favor, where you said you know what? We think this is going to turn into something?
Lila:Yeah, there were many. I feel like we get that question a lot and there's never one, two, three or even 20 things that I think about. There's that saying you know, death by a thousand swords. And I like to flip that and say success by a thousand wins. And that's how I kind of look at how we built Hari Mari over the years. And, sure, like you know, getting our first PO from Nordstrom, that was so exciting and really cool. The first celebrity sighting seeing on the organic was Joanna Gaines. I mean, that was just a really special moment and we were like maybe three years old at the time when that happened. And so, yes, there were really fun wins along the way, but I don't I can't name just a few that have contributed to where we are today because there have just been so many.
Jeremy:I can tell you, though, that I think, even like the hardest times right. So part of, I think, the way we're able to do this I'm sure you all have found the same thing is we never go high with the highs, we never go low with the lows, and we try to stay as even keel as possible, even in the lows of the lows. In the first couple of years where we were, you know, we started hiring people and we're like how are we going to make payroll this week, or how are we going to pay the rent, or how are we going to pay for the next round of flip-flops? There's always things that kind of like to pick you up, and I remember, like one of my low points, I was traveling, and I think I was going to China through Japan or something, and I was in Japan or we're trying to figure out maybe a client in Japan and I was away from the family and we didn't know how we were going to make payroll in four or five days and all this stuff and just trying to fix that from Narita Airport in Tokyo, and I remember sitting on the ground like I don't know what to do, and this was probably four years in at that point, and I remember clear as day is, I was sitting there and I was only looking at feet.
Jeremy:By the way, that's another bad habit of getting into the footwear business, like you walk around with your head down all day long just looking at people's feet and you can all. You could be like a carnival Barker for guessing feet sizes too, which is amazing. So that's all I bring to the table, though, and they I was looking at feet walk by Narita airport, and somebody walked by in a pair of our flip-flops, you know, and it was like got to pick it up, got to keep going. Things like that happen quite a bit. We call them God links. They're pretty amazing occurrences.
Guy:Yeah, I was going to say it must be so amazing to see one of your products right out in the wild, right? That's, that's the beauty of it. I guess a follow-up question on that from Rich, like for both of you, what was the first sort of aha moment you guys had that this could actually work really well. Not not just the narita story is great, but was there one that you said, hey, we've got a business here? Like this is, this is not just fun and games like we can actually make a living off this, we can create a great brand and and all of a sudden, boom, we, we are, we are a brand I think that that that came for me when we started selling to people online whose names we didn't recognize as family members or friends.
Jeremy:Lila always kids me because on the first day we launched the website I literally woke up at 3 am and she's like where are you going? I'm like I'm going to start filling orders because they're just going to be pouring in. We turned on the website. It was one of those classic moments from the films where you're hitting your computer because, like, is this thing working? There's no orders. We got six orders that first day and literally we knew every person.
Jeremy:I think we started realizing when orders started coming in and comments and people's feedback was there, was positive, and that it validated that we were bringing something new to the table. I mean, kind of coming out of the focus groups, we hired an engineer to wrap basically the toe post, which is that little thing that goes between your first and second toe, create like a memory foam piece that goes in there so that it's not uncomfortable when you first start wearing it. We patented that. I think that validated that quite a bit. And I think when you start looking at some of our wholesale and retail successes I mean even when Lila was first on the road again, we had all these flip-flops sitting in a warehouse, no orders, and Lila was going to each of the retailers, got in our car and went all around Texas and Oklahoma, louisiana and Arkansas. She would say what brands do you have? They would say, we have this brand at 55 bucks and we have this brand at 95 bucks. And they didn't have anything at that 60, 65, 70 level. And she'd be like, oh well, that's us. You know, we're the stepping stone, we're the price point you're missing.
Jeremy:But we're also and coincidentally enough, we're also like a customer that they didn't know they were missing, which, for us, like, end up being, you know, the guy or girl that gets out of college and, you know, is on the first or second job, they income and they want to get out of those nasty, fungus-filled shower shoes they've had for the last eight years. But they don't want to jump right into their grandmother and grandfather's flip-flops yet either. They want something that's timeless and unique. I think when we started realizing that we had a thesis, but then we hadn't quite put all the pieces together, the thesis we didn't realize everything. Then, when all these pieces started falling into place, between product, between marketing being here in Texas where the growth story of Flip Flops, by the way, is in Texas and the Southeast, not on the coast, where most people think. I mean when all those things started falling into place, I mean that's when we knew we were on to something special and then, yeah, I mean those were kind of like our collective aha moments.
Lila:You know, jeremy runs one side of the business and I run another side, so we always kind of have different answers to the questions. And I looked through Hari Mari through a wholesale lens and so for me it was starting to get attention and orders from, I mean, right here from Dallas, st Bernard Sports and then Tyler's, which is a chain across Texas, and getting really good sales reports from them. That was really cool. And being at trade shows and Jeremy and I working the shows and people coming up either wearing the product or complimenting the product, that was really special. And then, once we started to have it in the budget to start hiring people to bring on a team underneath us that saw the vision and got it and were helping us grow and they were obviously really talented and so that was meaningful and special to be able to bring on people who believed in it as well.
Lila:And so there was so many different things and I think early on Zappos was one of our probably larger retailers to come on board and I remember that their first season they're testing the brand, they were shocked at the sell-through and so they started telling their friends that had buyers in the industry of larger doors that they need to look at AriMari and that was a big moment for sure. The retail side has been fun. I mean when we launched it was just me and my little bag driving all over Texas and they're all over the Southeast and within a few months got, I think, like 45 stores. And then so we took that quote unquote success and went to our first trade show and just kind of built it from there. So just seeing these retailers come on board from places outside of Dallas, you know, it was really cool.
Jeremy:So you guys can cut that previous 10 minutes of us just talking a lot, and here's where you cut to. We knew we had something when we saw Joanna Gaines wearing our flip-flops on TV and in Fixer Upper. We knew we were having success. When we saw Bradley Cooper wearing our flip-flop around New York. I mean those kind of moments where people are wearing your flip-flops that you've never even met but you don't know them. That's validating for us.
Rich:What year was that?
Lila:Winning games was what 2015? 2015, 2016, something like that. Yeah, it was really early.
Rich:I have her beat. I don't know why my picture's not up. I think I was trying to do the math. Why my picture's not up? I think I was trying to do the math One to make sure I didn't get a pair of the $3 flip-flops that went overseas. But I actually think my, living in Dallas, I think my first pair of Harimaris was about 2013, 2014. Oh, my gosh, I'm so sorry.
Lila:You were early in the office.
Rich:No, it's okay, it's okay. I've subsequently bought more, so we're good.
Jeremy:Yeah, in fact I have a pair from our first order sitting on my shelf in my office. It's a great reminder. It's very embarrassing to me actually, I look back at it and I'm very embarrassed by them. But it's a great motivational tool because it just kind of forces you to think about how to get better.
Rich:Great motivational tool because it just kind of forces you to think about how to get better. I'm going to go nerd for a second, which is going to, you know, hopefully everybody doesn't top off from an audience perspective. But you said you patented that, the toe cushion. What year was that we filed?
Jeremy:in the year. We started in 2012, 2013, right, 2012. We filed in 2012. And because it's such a simple patent, you know like I think the more complicated patents probably go pretty fast. I think we didn't get until 2019. It was seven years to get our first patent. After three filings yeah, I think we actually have two or three patents now, but it took seven years to get the first one.
Jaime Lynn:So I have a question. You know, hari Mari's commitment to helping children with pediatric cancer seems to be a powerful part of your brand. Was that always baked into your business model or did you know? How did that evolve over time?
Lila:Yes, it was something that we knew our philanthropy before we knew what business Jeremy was going to start. So, after our time spent in Indonesia with Jeremy, jeremy produced a documentary there, a documentary film about malnutrition, how it affected kids. When I was there, I got on the board for the American Women's Association. I spent my time volunteering for orphanages in and around Jakarta. So, as you can imagine, we saw some stuff, and so a big part of whatever we did moving forward needed to be philanthropic.
Lila:We learned throughout my pregnancy and nothing was wrong with Aiden, thank God but we learned that pediatric cancer is the most fatal disease of children here in the US, more so than all childhood diseases combined. So it was a little backwards in that. We knew that that's whatever we did. That was going to be what we were going to support, so we had the philanthropy decided before the product, and so, yes, it's been something that we've been very fortunate to be able to do in a small harry-mary way, so we call it Flopster Cancer. You know the team appreciates it. We love it. It's really special to us, for sure.
Jaime Lynn:That's fantastic. I'm sure that really helped in those, you know, moments of trial and wall kicking moments, just to continue to push forward with that in mind.
Guy:I had a question to go back. So one of the things, jeremy, for me, especially for people who are listening when they want to start a business, and also for you, lila, from your perspective, a lot of it is you're talking about your trips to China, right, going like literally, it sounds like bootstrapping, going out and knocking on doors and visiting different factories and trying to gauge them. And, lila, you said, take your little bag and drive around Dallas and the greater Texas area knocking on doors. It sounds like for entrepreneurship and for starting a business, right. A lot of it is sort of this you got to. Just it's not digital, it's not through email, it's not through social, it's not through. It's literally packing your bag, going somewhere, uncomfortable, spending time on the road.
Guy:I'm sure a lot of you have stories of maybe eating terrible food because you didn't get somewhere in time. And, jeremy, I can't even imagine some of the stories of you taking the train through China. I've gone through China and the deeper parts and it's and I'm half Chinese. I'm with my mom who speaks Chinese, so I had that advantage. But can you talk a bit about some of those stories Because I know from my experience entrepreneurs always sometimes see the glory. Oh, I'm going to create this brand. It's going to be like you guys have this great big flip-flop behind you and you got to talk about their great success, but they don't know that hard first part, right, and can you shed some light on that for folks?
Jeremy:Yeah, probably too much light. I mean, there is nothing sexy about this zero. And if there's any ego or any standards of hotel food travel, those left us 13 years ago it is. I mean, we have traveled to some of the craziest places. I mean, we've had incredible experiences, regardless, right.
Jeremy:But yeah, I think that pounding the pavement it's a big piece of building a brand and whether that is with our factories, you know, we used to go there quite a bit before COVID. Actually, I used to go four or five times a year and meet suppliers, go around, and there's some you, you know you stay in some interesting places, interesting towns. I think life in asia prepared us, you know, living in jakarta and indonesia and seeing, seeing a lot of stuff there kind of have prepared us well for that. So that kind of nothing, nothing shocking. But I know that this one, you know she, she travels all the time for sales. You know, especially like right now she's in sell, sell, sell, sell mode for next year and so I think we had something like 20 trade shows, 10 in addition to that, 10 majors meetings that she goes to directly and I think that most people are about.
Jeremy:I think that there's some time, especially when flights are canceled late at night from coming home or flights are connection flights are canceled. You just have to adapt and I think that's. I think that's entrepreneurship. Honestly, they're like to me entrepreneurship. Honestly.
Jeremy:To me, entrepreneurship can be boiled down to a very simple set of standards or points. You have to have the ability to problem solve. You have to have the ability to adapt and be flexible. You really have to be able to keep again going back to the even keel. You just got to keep things in perspective and not get down and not get too up. Don't read your own press. Stop looking at your own Instagram posts, because none of that's real. What's real is the work that I found, or we found, is the work you put in, is what you get out of it, and if you're not putting that work in, it doesn't happen.
Jeremy:No one else is going to drive your ship. No one else is going to champion your brand like you do and, however, even when we first started out, we were like let's just hire that one person and that person will. We can take it a little easier. That one person will then help us get to there. I'm like hockey stick up and to the right and that doesn't work like that. You're going to be the hardest worker for your brand, always, and it doesn't change, even when you can't afford to bring great people in, like we have now. I mean, they still have to go about it, you still experience all this stuff, like there's Lila still stays in some of the worst hotels you've ever seen, you know, and it's like we're we elevate our standards. Now that we're you know much bigger than we were.
Rich:Like it's, it's still difficult and it's it's not. It's not easy, but what I love about what you're saying is you're obviously giving a grittier side to launching a brand, but you're doing it with the right term is not a badge of honor, but with that grit and determination of that's just what you have to do. And if you're passionate about it, then you're going to go through it and you can tell the authenticity. And if this was a marketing TED Talk, we would be talking about Gen Z and how important authenticity and community are to brands today, and a lot of brands are trying to discover it. Tell me about the Harimari community.
Lila:We have an amazing team. Right or wrong, we always call everybody a Harimari family. I know that's not technically our family, but we have a team here that genuinely cares and just wants to win. It's a gift to be able to work with a lot of them. It's a gift to be able to have their help. It's a gift to have their talent and insight. Some of the most recent hires that we brought on board have way more experience in retail space than Jeremy and I do, and that's really special. That's really cool. We always like to say we work hard, play hard. I think our team also Jeremy and I are horrible about celebrating wins. We'll get some amazing news and just be like what's next. And what I also love about our team is that they're like nope, we're stopping down, we're going to go have some drinks, we're going to go celebrate, we're going to go do something cool for the win.
Jeremy:And I think that's a probably good way of summing them up.
Rich:We sound like a lot of fun to hang out with. Well, I was going to ask you how old are your kids? 13 and 9. 13-year-old girl and 9-year-old boy. So the analogy that I use and I wonder if it translates into business, and I use this with my daughter is when your kid brings home a piece of art and it's good something they've drawn in school, you put it on the refrigerator and you compliment them. If they bring back something that's really good, then you rip it to shreds because you see art, scholarship and potential. So you wonder sometimes if that's kind of the. As you start to really achieve the success, it's like, okay, what's next?
Jeremy:Yeah, I think we're just closet masochists that are parading as entrepreneurs. Maybe every entrepreneur has to be a masochist and kind of be your own worst critic. I think that we definitely do that and we're also there to support each other too. I mean, I think one of the amazing things about this business is working with each other. I literally have. It's giving me a newfound respect for startups and founders who do it on their own. I don't understand how they do it. Honestly, she's my like foxhole companion. We're obviously very we have very different skill sets. We complement each other very well, but we're also there to soundboard each other's problems and challenges and also there when we do celebrate, we're there to celebrate each other's successes and I can't imagine having that. And it's funny.
Jeremy:When we first started together, we said we will never talk about work when we come home. We're going to cut it off Like 5 pm, no more work. We've got to preserve our personal life. Well, I think the thing that most people understand now that our age and have done this but I probably didn't understand when I was 20 and coming out of college is your work life and your personal life, if you want to be really good at what you want to do, at least in my personal opinion. They got to blend. It's got to be like a tapestry that's woven together. You got to figure out a way to do it that makes you happy Us being together. That 5 o'clock pm curfew on business went out the window the first week of starting Hari Mari we curfew on business went out the window the first week of starting hearty morning. We'll stay up, you know, just chatting about everything at night and in the mornings too. I mean, it's just so.
Jaime Lynn:It's like it's great having a sound work, because I think that would be really tough doing on your own, doing it solo well, I think what I'm hearing from you is that it's you know, when you have this business that you're so passionate about you. You want to continue to see it evolve and it becomes your lifestyle, and I love that you found a way to make it work. I have a question how do you measure success beyond just sales numbers? You talked a little bit about it, but I'm just curious how you continue to see success and maybe you're working on this delegating part else what else is the success for you guys?
Lila:I think about that one for a minute.
Jeremy:I do more of the product stuff, so I love product, I'm a product geek and so when I, when we sit down and talk about product or ideate on what that next season looks like, or have really cool partnerships in the pipeline that take, you know, years to develop sometimes, or just products that sometimes take years to develop, I think when you see that product for the first time, that's when, like you, start to like beam and get really happy and giddy and I think that those are kind of moments of internal success that I really value.
Jeremy:And I think when you see others now in our business so originally it was just us and we'd have our own little moments of that, you know. But now when we see others in our business and on our team and you can see that they have those same types of moments of pride, I think that's a special piece and I think I'm a big believer that stuff just translates outward. You know, in sales or whatever, if you're going about the right way, that will take care of itself and you've got the good people and the right seats, that will take care of itself. So I look at the core of our business and when we do it right and we do great things, then I'm really excited about what happens next and then handing it off to this woman and saying, all right, good luck.
Lila:I get super excited and just giddy when we get like a press hit organically, like, for example, this summer, I've been wanting to get Harimari and GQ since day one and I get this Google alert and maybe, like a month ago, and they featured our stone fields in GQ and that was completely and totally organic. That was really special. Oprah Magazine did a 2025 Footwear Awards and they chose our women's product as the best flip-flop. That was pretty cool. We don't have a PR firm y'all, so to get those kind of wins and there have been more this season and those are two that come to mind. Oh, sports Illustrated. Sorry, I can't stop.
Jeremy:But just with every single one of those there's also like a gotcha moment. So, for example, like two months ago, lila comes to me. She's like you will not believe this. Disney just reached out and they want to carry us in all of their theme park stores. They're not happy with their current flip-flop sales. Like that's incredible.
Jeremy:You know, we promised we wouldn't get excited about it, but then, you know, we promised we wouldn't get excited about it, but then the guy came back and we didn't know how big the PO was going to be. He's like we want you in all, we want Harimari in all stores and we want you know X number of units per store. And we just looked at each other and we're like this is amazing. Well, like an hour later we did a Google search on the guy and figured out it was a totally a fraud deal. It's like you go in this way, you can't go high, you can't go low, because, like that stuff happens all the time. You know, get so excited about disney and, by the way, if anybody from disney is listening, we really want you have the best parks, you have the best rides, the best movies. We'd love to work with you that's great.
Jaime Lynn:You're celebrated. They're going to call you.
Rich:We're going to hashtag the heck out of it and see if we can get some Disney love for that.
Guy:Well, I was going to say, Jeremy, when you said the aha moment, I thought you were going to say you realized the supply chain issue to get all those flip-flops is going to be off the chart.
Jeremy:By the way, you're right. There's a piece we kind of gloss over all the time, but it is such a critical factor in delivering on time, making people happy, making your customers happy, making sure that you're bringing it in the smartest, most efficient way possible, which also can be challenging. It's not?
Rich:easy. So one of the natural questions for me to ask because we talk about risk, we talk about failure and what you learn from it, and you've been very open and authentic about it. But I'll twist the question a little bit Is there, either from an account perspective or a direct to consumer, a single customer where it started off horribly wrong and you were able to turn it around, and how?
Lila:Yeah, I'll take that one. So we got our first PO from REI and we were so excited about it and it's a meeting with them in June and I'm taking my samples for the upcoming season and she kind of surprised me and she's like, oh well, we want to place an immediate order too. And I was like, oh well, that's great. So we shipped them and it sat in the distribution center for like two months. We completely missed the opportunity to sell to them that immediately. So they slashed their pre-book after we'd already placed the order for the upcoming year.
Lila:So it was just a disaster from start to finish. And but what was really cool is that we just got another PO from them for next year. So they're coming back on board and it took some time but we're really excited about it and the meeting went really well and they're going to put it in all Texas stores and I think across the southeast as well, and so. But it took me two years of staying in touch with them and reaching out with updates in the hopes that we could get we could try again, and so that was an example that comes to mind. That was pretty recent.
Rich:And I think I probably know the answer to it, but I'm going to ask the question how did you address it when you discovered, or they discovered, that it was sitting in the distribution center?
Lila:Well, it was kind of an awkward conversation because it was actually their distribution center, not our distribution center, and so they by the way, if anybody from REI is listening to this we love you, we love you, we love you.
Jeremy:Can't wait to work.
Lila:They've been great. They've been great, but obviously because the product got to the floor late, sales weren't great, and so that's on us in part. Right. At whatever point it got to market, you want it to perform, whatever the time of year was. Obviously it wasn't the right time, but it still didn't perform. So that piece is on us, and so it was a little bit of an awkward conversation. You want to be sure and highlight the fact that the delay wasn't our fault, but then, at the same time, the slower sales was ours, right. So it's just being open and honest and transparent, but just kind of being delicate about it at the same time.
Guy:So I one question you guys it's really fast. And again, from the entrepreneurship side, as a team, you guys have been doing this and obviously it's it's it's your brand, it's your baby, it's your baby, it's your, it's your company. How do you see sort of the next stage, right as you grow this and having to bring in potentially people that you're going to have to give more power to from a leadership, whether it's from sales or design or marketing or or partner, whatever that may be Like? Can you talk a little bit about that? Like, have you thought about it? What is that going to look like for you guys? Cause I know it's. It's always a challenge as you grow to a certain level. You can't do everything like you used to. You're too big. You need outside leadership to come in. How do you guys see that? What's the challenge for you guys?
Jeremy:What's really interesting about that is for the first nine, 10 years of the business we grew the business with just me and Lila and a lot of 20-year-olds who mostly hired right out of college and we were trying to train them how to do what they were doing. And we got to a certain level and found we kind of would plateau those levels right and when we started to be able to afford best-in-class folks with 20 years of experience at XYZ companies most of them here in Dallas, you all know and bring them on board in key leadership positions, it was a little scary at first, to be honest, because it did feel like we were kind of losing control, some control, which is ridiculous I mean not in hindsight, it's ridiculous that we even had any hesitancy to do that, but we did, because it's kind of like losing control of your baby. We always call Hardin-Mars our third child. It's the most temperamental out of all of our children but you're kind of losing some of that control.
Jeremy:But it's been a breath of fresh air in having other people grow the business, not just us, and I think once we realized that we were okay with that. And not only were we okay with that, but they're doing a great job in what they're doing, because they're better at what they're doing than we are. I mean, it's just kind of, it's just a reality check, you know, with yourself. I think that once we realize that it's like yes, like what for us, like let's go do this, like let's add here here are the other positions we're looking to fill, and I think, as we continue to grow out, it's like what are the key levers that we're pulling to make that growth happen? And let's find the best people we can put them in those positions. And for us, I think it's been a big, a big hurdle to get over, but a silly one because, looking in retrospect, it was that's the absolute only way to do this.
Rich:So you mentioned the 20 somethings that you had early on, with everything that you've learned, with those that are starting their careers or just graduated from college, looking at the job market, with everything going on today, what advice do you have for that person to stand out from the crowd?
Lila:Put in the work, work hustle. There are no shortcuts. Not only do you want to do what's been asked of you to do, but be that person that's offering to do more, saying what else can I do? Or not only because you want to do well, but also just in the interest of learning more right. We have members of our team come up to us that were younger and even now with interns. I love that. I always appreciate someone who's eager and asking questions and wanting to dive in and get their hand. Diving in and getting your hands dirty is an amazing thing that I think everyone right out of college needs to do. We still do it to some extent too, but that's huge. You're not going to learn anything until you do it.
Jeremy:I think problem solving, willing to adapt, helping figure things out on your own, or at least trying to figure out on your own, before you know, pulling somebody else in, I think stick-to-itiveness is a big deal. You know, I think a lot, a lot of times what we saw, especially with 20 somethings, that when we hire, that they jump, you know, in a year or two, I think, just being able to, you know, assuming you like your career choice, like just stick with it, good things come when you stick with your position. And I think that that's how you know, even in our previous life I mean I know you all too. I'm sure you have the same experience I mean, yeah, there's a time when you need to make a change. For sure, there's also time to stay. I think there's.
Jeremy:You know, the grass is not greener anywhere else. I mean this is, I think, the things that you all have experienced, we've experienced. They're kind of like maxims, like everything is hard, everything's challenging, nothing is given to you, you're not, you know, entitled to anything. When you come in, like it is all meritocracy, like all meritocracy, it's meritocracy time you come into a new job and you earn it, and I think at the end of the day, it's like if you walk into a mentality and you're going to go, do your best and own it and kind of give it your all, I think that it bodes really well and honestly, now, if you do that as a 20-year-old, in my opinion, you stand out, you stand off the page and it is really clear as day when that type of person and personality comes in and it's refreshing.
Jaime Lynn:So then, what would you say is like an underrated skill or trait that you do look for in new teammates.
Lila:Right now and that I would answer that question differently as we've evolved and grown over the years. But I always feel like and I know where we've been doing this for 13 years and you can say Hari Mari has been successful, but I don't know how much longer I will feel like we're a startup, but I still in so many ways still feel like we're a startup and I feel like getting to the bottom of whether or not someone has any kind of a little bit of entrepreneurship in them.
Lila:For me, I feel like that's key. I think when I look at our team, for the most part everyone has a little bit of entrepreneurship and a little bit of that spirit in them, and I think that's important. And that answer may change if we visit again next time in three years or five years, but for where we are right now, I think having a little bit of that understanding is really helpful. And also but just flexibility. You know, as you grow and things are changed, whatever we do next month may not work, or last month may not work for this upcoming month, and there's just it's. And when you're growing at the rate that we're growing, whatever policies and procedures we had in place last year have been thrown out the window for a whole new set the following year, and so with that, flexibility is also important. And understanding the needs of the business. It's not going to be the same every day. It's going to constantly change. You just got to roll with it.
Rich:So I'm going to take this opportunity to roll into the rapid fire round. I am going to look for a show of hands between Guy and Jamie Lynn to see who wants to take the first question. All right, so Guy's going to take the first question, jamie Lynn the second, and then I will wrap up First answer that comes to mind, but you get a twofer because this has worked out very well. So, guy, you first.
Guy:All right. So I'm going to ask you guys and maybe we should have put Rich in like two different chambers where they can't hear the other answer, and then see what they would say right, the newlywed game, but all right. Traveling to a new city, describe your perfect day.
Jeremy:Good, all right. Traveling to a new city Describe your perfect day. Good food, really.
Lila:See all the sites. You got one word. Oh, I got.
Jeremy:Oh yeah, Food is yours Sites.
Rich:OK for question number two. You don't have to go one word, it was kind of the first thought you went into your mind. But food and sites and just the interaction. I mean he said newlywed game and you guys just nailed the newlywed game.
Jaime Lynn:So I love this. All right, I'm going to stick with the travel theme. So you've traveled so much, right? What is one thing that you purchased on one of your trips that you absolutely love?
Jeremy:Headphones.
Lila:Furniture. In our house we have some of the most amazing teak furniture from Indonesia, from our time there.
Rich:Really cool. Do you kind of collect things from travel? Oh yeah, I'd love to.
Lila:I like to have mementos, big or small. Absolutely Reminds you of the trip.
Jeremy:I call it from the house into the garage after they've spent some time there.
Rich:Yeah, I'm in the process of kind of decompressing what we have, but the thing that will stay is the broken toucan from Honduras from a trip a couple weeks ago. All right, if you could transport yourself anywhere in the world right now and here's the deal 24 hours and it's instantaneous they're instantaneous back so you don't have to worry about connections and missed connections and all that, where would you go?
Lila:Bali.
Jeremy:That's a good one. I want to go hang out with Richard Branson on Necker Island.
Rich:I read his autobiography. I don't know whether I was inspired or a little bit frightened, but he definitely has a terrific attitude about it. All right Well, lila Jeremy, this has been fantastic and I think you have probably done a very effective job scaring a few people out of starting a brand and being entrepreneurs, but you, at the same time time, have probably inspired a lot more that with hard work, passion and authenticity that. Thank you for letting us froth of the mouth about flip-flops.
Lila:Yes, we enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
