A note from Bob and SDSI Newsletter - June 30, 2016

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It's been a busy two months, hard on the heels of the Amgen Tour of California and the Bill Walton statue dedication. Elsewhere in the newsletter you will find the run down on the new Star Brand Award and Capital Forum that went with it. We had six member companies “pitching” our celebrity panel. Kudos to the all…the presentations were really tight and compelling. If an agent from Shark Tank swooped in at the last minute and asked if any of the presenting companies could be ready for national Shark Tank in 5 minutes, the answer would have been a universal “YES!” Everyone was really well prepped…the celebrity judges were fun…and VerifiR and Hookit took home the Star Brand award. Sully Sullivan was the host and he brought the film crew from his Big Biz Show with him…cannot wait to see the final video!

61, $47,500,000, 89% and 400…quick, what are these numbers? The answer is metrics of our SDSI Springboard Grads. 61 graduates have raised $47.5M, 89% of all grads are still in business and they have created 400 jobs since they launched their companies. Amazing. The current SDSI Springboard application period is 98% closed but if you have a strong candidate, call Renne asap. This is the best “deal” in sports business. Cost? Zero, but you got to be an SDSI member.

Now that I think about it, June actually was a great month…I was really into the Chew n Chat meet up at AmericanWave Machines. Pretty awesome to see your favorite wave type generated before your very eyes…no paddling required! Our hosts, Bruce and Marie McFarland, gave us an awesome demo and also started a conversation about the Destination Resort of the Future. Imagine Sea World replaced with a resort that has a wave pool by AmericanWave Machines, an indoor skydiving tunnel like Airborne, a climbing wall from Mesa Rim, a cool skate facility like the Mission Valley YMCA skate park, BMX track, coffee bar from Lofty Coffee…you get the picture. It’s not a fantasy…there are plans around the world to make these types of new destinations reality. Among the parties interested in the space is the one and only Jimmy Buffet, recently described by the NYT as the “Patron Saint of the Unconcerned!” I don’t know about that but he has his recreational business figured out. Maybe we could arrange a trade out!

~Bob

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Press Release: Hookit and VerifiR awarded 2016 SDSI Star Brand and $5,000 Cash Prize

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Hookit and VerifiR awarded 2016 SDSI Star Brand and $5,000 Cash Prize
-celebrity and investor judges honor top graduates of SDSI Springboard business mentoring program-

Solana Beach, Calif. — June 13, 2016 — SD Sport Innovators (SDSI) is excited to announce Hookit and VerifiR as the winners of the inaugural SDSI Star Brand Award and $5,000 cash prize.  The SDSI Capital Forum & Star Brand Award presented by KPMG and Saltus Capital Consultants, celebrates the courageous and dedicated entrepreneurs who take the risk of bringing new products, services and ideas into the Sports and Active Lifestyle (SAL) market. It provides a platform for the SAL investment community to see and evaluate emerging SAL businesses.

The 2016 SDSI Star Brand Award winners were announced on June 7, 2016 at the SDSI Capital Forum held at the Challenged Athlete Foundation.  Six up-and-coming SAL companies presented their business opportunities to a panels of celebrity investor judges and an intimate room of investors.  The judges included; Bill Walton, basketball legend & SDSI Chairman; Tony Finn, “Godfather of Wakeboarding” & founder of Liquid Force; Beaver Theodosakis, founder of prAna; and Robert Reynolds, Director at Park Lane sports investment bank.

“All six of the presenting companies were over the top exemplary,” said Walton.  “They made it overwhelmingly difficult to select just one winner – so we selected two.  Ultimately, they are all winners and well prepared for their future success! What a night! I wish everything in my life could be just like the SDSI Capital Forum and Star Brand Awards – let’s do some more of that”

Rather than break a tie, thanks to SDSI’s generous sponsors, VerifiR and Hookit were named co-winners of the Star Brand Award and each company took home a $5,000 check. The event emcees were Sully Sullivan and Russ T. Nailz, co-hosts of the Big Biz Show.

"The team at Hookit is honored to have received this award recognizing the efforts we have put into building Hookit to where it is today,” said Scott Tilton, Hookit CEO and co-founder.  “Our involvement with SDSI over the years and programs like SDSI Springboard have been a real inspiration and provides incredible support to emerging companies here in San Diego."

Presenting companies included: Aculief, Advntur, Hookit, LALO, SkateXS and VerifiR.  All presenting companies were vetted by and graduates of SDSI Springboard, a 20 week business mentoring program that helps prepare companies for sustainable and scalable growth.  SDSI Springboard is now accepting applications through June 26.  Learn more and apply to SDSI Springboard here for a chance to participate in the 2017 SDSI Capital Forum and Star Brand Award.


About SDSI

SDSI is a nonprofit business development organization. Our mission is to make San Diego the capital of the Sports and Active Lifestyle (SAL) Industry. We provide connections, collaboration opportunities, continuing executive education and business mentoring through our accelerator program, SDSI Springboard. Since 2009 SDSI Springboard has graduated 61 companies. Graduates have raised $47.5M in capital funding, have created 390 jobs and 89% are still in business. SDSI represents over 90 SAL companies. The sum of our members’ businesses represent the “San Diego Lifestyle”.

Psst…Don’t Tell Bill Walton! Seriously, it's a Secret!

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Update 5/16/16: For some photos from the event, CLICK HERE

Question: So what do you do for a guy with this resume? (this is only the highlight reel)
•    National all-time high school record for field goal percentage at 79%
•    Number 3 all-time rebounder nationally in the history of high school basketball
•    Won A LOT of consecutive basketball games beginning with 49 games at Helix High School, 20 games his freshman year at UCLA and was a part of the record-holding 88 game win streak at UCLA while winning two national championships.  This might be the best record in the history of sports.
•    3-time Academic All American 1972-74
•    3-time NCAA Player of the Year Award 1972-74
•    1973 James E Sullivan Award winner as the Top Amateur Athlete in the USA
•    2-time NBA Champion- Portland 1977, Boston 1986
•    NBA Finals MVP 1977
•    NBA MVP 1978
•    Basketball Hall of Fame
•    NBA 50th Anniversary Team
•    A guy who says: “I love San Diego. I love my chair. My Bike is my gym, my wheelchair, and my church”
•    Big time supporter of Challenged Athlete’s Foundation
•    Patient Ambassador of “The Better Way Back”
•    A New York Times Bestselling Author of, Back from the Dead
•    ESPN/Pac-12 network announcer
•    An all-around amazing person who loves San Diego above all else and does everything in his power to continue to make it a better place for all of us to live

ANSWER: You make a gigantic full sized statue of Bill with his bike, and you put it in a prominent place in San Diego where everyone can share the stoke called “Bill!”
That's what’s going to happen. It’s still a secret from Bill for now, but we would like to invite you personally to come to the unveiling May 14, 8:00 am Ski Beach at Vacation Road.  As long as Bill actually does not find out about this, he will be there to led the Three Wise Men (3WM) Memorial Ride. This is a great endeavor all by itself. The 3WM Foundation is a non profit organization led by Nathan Fletcher that addresses head on, the very troubling high rate of suicides among military men mustering out into our civilian world.

The 3WM Memorial Ride is one component of a super weekend centered around the Amgen Tour of California (ToC) which starts the very next day for the first time ever in San Diego. See the full weekend event details below.
Bring yourself and friends for the 8:00 am unveiling on Saturday May 14. Let’s try to give back to Bill just a little…there’s no way we can do more for our favorite San Diegan!

bob

Alibaba

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Not every month has a notable event, but February was a rare exception. As many of you know, Bill Walton made a trip to China late 2015 and networked into the executive team at Alibaba. (In case you forgot, Bill is our number 1 talent scout!)

Bill arranged a preliminary meeting for Nick and me in San Francisco. We made the trip, met the Alibaba executive team and had a good dialog about the California SAL scene. On the way out, the senior exec, Jim Wilkinson, said “if you have companies in your membership that would like to sell more in China, bring them up to the office sometime.”

“Sometime” was this month, February 10th. I invited a representative group of our members to come along: Jinx, SKLZ, VerifiR, Eagle Creek (VF) and Road Runner Sports made the trip. The mission was to see if Alibaba could facilitate members' efforts selling in China.

As many of you know, I have been sourcing in China for 20 plus years and actively selling into the Chinese retail high fashion footwear market for several years. I don’t think of myself as “China naïve” or as uniformed about the Chinese market, or Alibaba for that matter. Big mistake!

Here are a few notes from the meeting. The numbers are not typos!

  • The Alibaba.com is a Market Place for living. It is not a Yahoo or Google site. Imagine a single site that combines Amazon, PayPal, eBay, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, email, Twitter, Netflix, Yelp, Fed Ex, Kayak Travel and more.
  • China is more than 90% mobile device based. Last year 409 million people used the Alibaba website, almost all mobile based. They transacted on average 50 times per user…around 20 billion annual transactions.

Alibaba is an everyday life experience for more people in China than live in total in the U.S.A. The average day for these people is often centered around the site. They go there first to plot out their day…food shopping, restaurants, movies, brand buying, travel, navigation, etc.

  • Alibaba is a marketing monster. On China “Singles Day,” November 11, 2015, Alibaba sold $14.32 billion. That amounted to 1,640 transactions per second!  There are over 1.1 million people in the delivery process, moving 467 million packages per day.
  • Basically this makes the opportunity almost overwhelming. Imagine if you wanted to start selling in the U.S.A. just to reach around 100 million active users across all the disciplines…then multiply it times 4…mega challenge that will require a serious strategy and funding!

Now, it’s not easy to sell B to C , or B to B in China. It’s not perfect for every brand. There is risk of counterfeit, or channel conflict, or perhaps conflict with your brand’s distributor. It takes money (imagine SEO costs to access this many people). On the other hand, it's a huge opportunity.

SDSI is working on a model to facilitate access to China via Alibaba. I suspect it will take several months to get it done. Of course we will get the plan out to everyone as soon as we can.

It’s not often that a small business accelerator group like SDSI can bring a real opportunity to its members, certainly not of this scope. I am very anxious to see if we can help members who are interested to make the big step into this market!

bob

A welcome note from Bob Rief

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Hey, Welcome to SDSI... We don’t care how you got here, phone, email, website…welcome! San Diego Sport Innovators is the local business development group focused in on Sport, Active and Healthy Lifestyle companies. The sum of our members businesses are what’s commonly known as ‘the San Diego lifestyle.” Hike, bike, surf, kite, skate, fly, hit balls or catch them, swim-peddle and run, moto, desert, whatever, its why we live in San Diego and its why there is an SDSI.  If you run a company like this, or work in one, or want to work in one, or better yet, start one, San Diego is the place and we are here to help.

SDSI is a business development group that is focused on the SAL business, “Sport and Active Lifestyles.”  We are a membership organization comprised of Industry members and the Service providers that make the wheels go around. Our industry members range from very small sandal companies to very big companies like GoPro. Our service providers run the gamut as well, from small-business focused bookkeeping firms to multinational Law Firms, Banks and Investment Bankers. There are three classes of membership: Board of Directors, Advisory Board and General.  The fee structure is low. Each group meets no less than 4 times a year. Major events are attended by all.

And what do we do….?

We work non-stop on making San Diego the capital of the SAL Industry. Just as Boulder is the Capital of Outdoor, San Diego should be the Capital of the SAL industry. We are adjacent to the “new China” called Mexico, number 3 in car exports, number 1 in beer, and 5000 miles and 15 timezones closer than the “old China.”  To the east we have the mountains and deserts and all the fun things that come with them. To the west, the Pacific…what can I say? And to the north, Camp Pendleton and 8,000 Marines keeping the Orange and LA Counties up there, away from our peace and serentity!

San Diego is the perfect work ecosystem! Bring your business , bring your self, start a business…this is the place.

But that's not all. We provide Executive Networking, for instance, connecting an emerging company with sales momentum with a local Investment group to fund growth.  We do this actively every day. If we can help connect, that's what we do!

Our executive education programs have been very successful. In 2015 we met Jeff Kearl, the Founder of Skullcandy and Stance, Bob McKnight, the Founder of Quiksilver, Beaver Theodaskis, Founder of prAna, and the amazing Guy Kawaski, Apple’s first marketer and Jeff Harbaugh, a very well known consultant, journalist and skate iconoclast. The goal is to send everyone home just a bit smarter that they arrived. Seems to work!

Last but most importantly, we run the SDSI Springboard Program. This amazing program serves start ups by providing a 20 week mentoring program that converts dreams to business plans. Our Mentors understand this special “space” called SAL and have played a role in helping many companies get started..50 in fact, and they have accessed a little over $40 million in capital!

So the strength of SDSI is membership. If you are not a member, email, call, come in; the more of us, the better.  Join us in making San Diego the best place to live and work anywhere!

bob