The StockX Insight That Can Help Your Business Make More Sales

what i know is that you're sitting on some really fun information can you share anything about like what's been selling during this game yes and i'm gonna do it i'm gonna do a plug you've got your perspective i just want to be happy don't you so we've got our last guest for today dina bari dina serves as stockx cmo a detroit based online resale marketplace dnet has demonstrated a history of building beloved consumer brands having served as a cmo for three other companies including birchbox we're super excited to have you dina tina how are you

hello great to see you all together on our happy hour yes that's right well let's get right into the thing i'm actually curious about you've got a really epic background what's on those shelves anything interesting anything oh my gosh anything i can flip on ebay you do not believe how much commentary these bookshelves get um the big joke is this was actually meant to be my house we moved to detroit when i accepted this job right so we're six months seven months into living in michigan moved from california and we set up this office because my husband runs his own business and works from home and it took me about four weeks to take over the office and the bookshelf there's everything in here from you know philosophy and yoga books to um there's a book called cabin porn right behind me um and then all kinds of fiction from all stages of our lives but this is the ultimate conversation piece right here

how do you consider yourself how do you view yourself as a leader as since that's kind of the ethos of this like yeah and like all of us we've all evolved and gotten better what has been the biggest thing that you've closed the gap on in your career that you're just like happy you're like wow i'm really glad i got better at this because had i not i don't think i could be the leader i am today yeah well there i think there's two things um and one of them i'm going to echo what lockheed said just a little while ago you know the idea of being a thinker that can combine left and right parts of the brain i think in marketing in particular that is a very valuable skill um and hard to find so i think that is um something that i would say describes my style holistic thinker and somebody who likes to synthesize and integrate um and then i think the other thing is just um being empathetic being um a very like holistic person in the sense of like look we dina you're back i think you're back i'm bad good great sorry about that no worries okay so um i'll just backtrack a little bit you know the idea i was talking about the idea of left and right brain thinking coming together and being an integrative thinker and then um being somebody who really appreciates and values the whole self being brought to work and i show up that way i want my team to and i think as leaders today especially in this climate it's so critically important and showing your team that that's what you believe in that's what you support from them helps to bring out the best the most creativity the best results and the most present and committed work what um what has really been the biggest observation you've had about being a leader during covid because obviously some of us are fortunate it's funny how i just said that it was like a little bit of a slip fortune i was gonna say fortunate enough to navigate through the great recession or 9 11 or things that nature those are not fortunate things but like i definitely felt that we were in a 10-year window where a lot of people were already at 32 years old in their career and never been through anything but hyper growth and i was like man one day this is gonna hit and so here we are thoughts on that yeah totally i'm a huge believer in the fact that um the failures or the missteps or even the things that are outside of your control like macro events um the challenges to make you better and you know having lived through the great recession 911 even having joined a startup that was a total bust you know and literally went out of business um those things i think make us more resilient more adaptable more creative and i think those are like critical skills in kobe 19 um you know marketing and business so you know when i think about showing up for my team at stockx the leadership team spends a lot of time making sure that we are keeping people together keeping them connected a lot of people are lonely isolated confused you know all the negative feelings and um you know work can play a role in combating that and leadership and teams so that's i think one really important thread for our company and for me personally is just being there for my team i think secondly is encouraging the adaptability the growth mindset again it's a basic uh survival skill right you got to be able to land on your feet when unforeseen circumstances present themselves and in marketing in particular there are some very new real constraints if you think about experiential marketing content these are areas that really have relied on the in real life experiences um to create what they create and suddenly those avenues are cut off and so it's only the people who are open-minded flexible willing to adapt that can not only survive but i think actually come up with better ideas we've our team has come up with new ways of working in this environment that i think we're going to bring with us into the future into the normal when we return to normal um you know thinking more creatively about how to generate content in a scalable way that reaches more people um taking events that might have been activated in real life and bringing them to a digital forum so that more people can participate like these are really valuable skills so um i think teams that are focused on being adaptable can actually grow through this

so i've had the great fortune of knowing josh very early on literally one of the great misses of my entrepreneurial investing career i was not investing in stockx early on around things that i love like flipping and speakers and now sports cards which you know has super got me fired up yeah um what i know is that you're sitting on some really fun information can you share anything about like what's been selling during this year yes and i'm gonna do a plug because we just published a media report which has is like a gold mine of fun facts but it's called the stockx snapshot it's our market movers and we talk about things like andrea i need that immediately andrea please that should be in my inbox right now like amy get on this i need that now go ahead no um you know some fun facts and i'm gonna cheat and refer to it but um you know puzzles up almost 600 percent um slides because who's going you know who's going outside anymore right so up almost 400 masks obviously at 300 percent um you know slippers again a big mover track pants like all the stuff that we are wearing every day right and then um i think the other thing that we've seen is a resurgence of what you might call classic silhouettes and sneaker like i think this is a time when people are maybe hesitant to splurge on that really luxury item that may or may not have enduring value but you know the classic silhouettes that have been relevant for 20 years that people are right plus you know for the people that don't collect and flip who actually wear these incredible you know just the dominance you have with sneakers you know look let's call a spade for a lot of human beings flexing with that impossible to get pair of off-whites when you go courtside to an nba game is very much in the culture of this and if you're not doing that maybe you don't need to do that right this minute 100 and i think the other thing is you know the last dance like that has been an amazing influence in our world and it's this beautiful convergence right because i think a lot of people you know we have such a diverse group you know obviously you and i can talk about this all day explain even the last dance what that is so the last dance is this amazing documentary about michael jordan and the bulls in their attempt to win um their final um championship nba championship and it really talks about you know the team it talks about michael jordan and it talks about um his brand as well and in sneakers you know his brand is a force like potentially the biggest force to be reckoned with and what we've seen um you know actually hbo released this pulled the release date up it was meant to be released later on and then when kovid um came along and sports were canceled i think they saw a big window um again sign of adaptability so they released this early and it was at a time when there was nothing no nothing to watch on tv for a sports fan and so um it was just brilliant timing and it was actually brilliant marketing for stockx we were not involved um i keep saying that would have been a dream relationship during partnership but it still had this incredible effect of reintroducing people to jordan brand shoes and we've had some of our best ever days actually during this period which is sort of hard to believe you never would have predicted that right in april and you're all sitting at home and saying what does this mean for business um we've had records around certain silhouettes that were released in the past couple of months that have become our best ever sellers fastest ever sellers so i think it shows you know back to the trends question like the power of enduring classics and in a time like this when there's uncertainty and stress and um you know recessionary forces like people are spending money on the things that have proven value

value stockx has done a nice job with content series give everybody a little context to that content yeah absolutely well thanks for that plug um we have an amazing team and basically you know their remit is to tell stories that are relevant um to our you know the products that we sell so it's always contextualized in our world of sneakers sort of culturally relevant products and the people the creators who use those products to express themselves and so we have this whole network of influencers musicians athletes all kinds of creators that we um collaborate with to tell stories and often the product plays a role in that sometimes it doesn't but we do make an effort to bring it back so that it's um related to what we're selling on the platform and um you know we use a mix of long form we have these amazing you know almost historical pieces we actually have someone on our content team who's a phd we have two phds and one of them is a rap and hip-hop historian and so he can write these amazing long-form pieces about you know the history of sneakers through hip-hop culture um or we have other pieces that are more seo oriented meant to drive results you know all the shoes in the last dance top ten jordan shoes um and then we also have other forms you know video um and we've been coming up with these more soundbite written forms lately um to just hear what it's like to be a person a creator in barcelona a creator in toronto you know as we grow more globally in the community become in many ways covet has you know shrunk our world because we're all alone more and at home more but it's also expanded our world because we're online and we're you know the boundaries that previously existed for physical interactions have been raised so um you know we're trying to lean into that and introduce more of the cultural marketplace at the global marketplace that is stockx to our community um and so we've come up with a few new conceits during this time one of them is on the line with which is that short format interview with creators around the world and we're going to keep testing and experimenting i think that's one thing that is very much part of our dna as a startup and as a brand that's on the forefront of culture

do you believe that every brand should start thinking of themselves more in the production of content as a marketing execution not just a maker of commercials and ads yes i think especially in so the world that i live in is direct to consumer um you know i've spent 15 years in direct consumer startups and um i think when you're building that direct relationship with a consumer you have to um provide context you have to engage them in a deeper way than just a transactional way and content plays a huge role to show that you have a voice you have a point of view you have authority in the space that you care about the issues the customer cares about i think this is part of being a customer-centric brand and business you talked about that on your last call you know i think brands that own their channels and aren't reliant on supply other sort of distribution have that advantage where they can go really deep with a customer um and that means you have the data but it also relationship you have the connective tissue with um you know all the stories that you tell you know what's

uh did when did you get to detroit i moved here so i started the job in september and i was commuting believe this or not i was commuting from california so i was flying here on monday going home on thursday and then my family and i relocated in november so right in the winter so what was your favorite let's give detroit a little love i know it was only like eight to ten weeks before or for 12 14 weeks before covet hit but what was your first observation i've just really enjoyed the resurrection of such a great city in a lot of ways um your biggest observation for d-town yeah i mean there is so much um heart for detroit and one of the things that i think is really remarkable is just like when you come to detroit the people who are here are just so loving and they're like yes we welcome you a new person into our community and we want you to survive and thrive here because that's how we're gonna thrive so that's one thing i mean the people very welcome they're just loving you know and they want people to participate in their community which is awesome um you know i spent a lot of time in my first six weeks of the job staying in hotels right in downtown detroit um and eating in restaurants so um because i didn't have a kitchen to cook in so i will do a shout out for what has become my favorite restaurant downtown um which is laila it's a lebanese restaurant and i'm lebanese so it has special meaning to me but it's like amazing food so real quick just for some fun so you see a lebanese restaurant in you know i come from you know soviet russian just that like where there's always that thing is this gonna be as good as my grandma's thing or my family saying like are you like a tough critic of lebanese food and it like surprised you so did it surprise you did like how did that whole little yes i am a tough critic and it did surprise me pleasantly um the dish that i always use to judge is a simple one it's baba ghanoush but it's like you know sometimes it's those most simple things where you can tell what's going on um and but then it also has like a modern flair so amazing cocktails amazing vibe great service you know so you feel like you're in a really cosmopolitan city and like a world class um and we have lived in new york and san francisco so we love that um but they're spoiled with food yeah we're spoiled but i will say the food here in detroit has been really fantastic so i'm pleasantly surprised and eager to get back out there and start eating my face off again well thank you for being on we really appreciate you thanks for having me we'll talk soon thank you bye youtube what's up it's garyvee first of all thank you so much i hope you're doing super well during these times i also want to ask you please subscribe because my commitment and exploration of youtube is about to explode stories polls more content more engagement more surprise and delight this is the time to subscribe i hope you consider it and i hope i see you soon