Chris Burch Never Stops Listening

Chris Burch, the mega-successful investor, and brand guru was a poor student in school, as he would be the first to tell you. But he has been a great student of life and of people.

Burch has seeded, launched, and invested in many successful businesses including Guggenheim Partners, and BaubleBar; products such as Jawbone, Jambox, and Powermat; fashion brands such as Staud and Danielle Guizio and, most notably, Tory Burch which he launched with his now ex-wife. Burch has also been active in real estate development and hospitality, launching the Faena Hotel + Universe in Buenos Aires, and the Nihi hotels in Indonesia.

But if you ask Burch how he decides which companies to invest in, he will tell you that he invests in people, not companies; and that his greatest talent is as a discerning listener when he talks to entrepreneurs.

Burch grew up outside of Philadelphia to, in his words, “incredible parents” who were nonetheless challenged by Burch who had anxiety, didn’t sleep much, had trouble focusing and was “an extraordinarily poor student.”

Those nights when Burch couldn’t sleep, he would tune in to late night (or early morning) talk radio, listening to the voices and sometimes calling in himself. And, although no one realized it at the time, Burch was developing his capacity to really listen to people that would serve him well throughout his life.

Early on Burch discovered he loved clothes, and he often haunted the local Bryn Mawr thrift shop for classic clothes. No one talked about sustainable fashion then, for Burch it was both an aesthetic choice – and an economic one.

Burch’s parents sent him to The Tilton School, a private boarding school in New Hampshire, which Burch says made a significant difference in his life. Although still not a strong student, Burch was able to excel in sports which were important to his sense of self and reinforced his social abilities. Burch also discovered an entrepreneurial streak, getting the rights to sell subscriptions to the New York Times on campus.

By the time he got to Ithaca College in Western New York, where other kids were all about music, Burch was all about sports and about business. Among Burch’s college business ventures were supplying pinball machines to Cornell University and getting the hot dog concession at Ithaca sporting events. “I loved this idea of being entrepreneurial.”

While in college, with his friend John Marshall, Burch went to a sweater factory and bought Fair Isle sweaters which he then sold to Ithaca college women by going dorm to dorm. “It worked out well. It was fun,” he said. In doing so, Burch wasn’t so much creating a fashion statement as he was drawing upon what he knew. “I came from a very preppy kind of background. I always wore my collars on my shirts up and I always liked bright color sweaters.”

After college Burch started a clothing company with his brother called Eagle’s Eye. They started with brushed Shetland Sweaters. “We found all these women’s shops [to carry the sweaters]” and the company took off.

Looking back, Burch now says, “I just got lucky.” It was a moment when youth culture was driving fashion and “the preppy style” was getting wider exposure. “I had a good visual memory” Burch said. More importantly, Burch said, he had “an emotional memory” which is how Burch describes his particular synesthesia of being able to sense how wearing certain clothes makes the consumer feel. This ability to see the emotional response that clothing, products, or even hotel and home environments produce, would turn out to be one of Burch’s superpowers.

Eagle’s Eye took off. “We knew our generation and we designed for that generation,” Burch said. At that time, Burch recalls, “there was no talk about money or success.” Burch recalls that for him “it was like you were scared every day and you got up and you just wanted to do better and better.” Nonetheless by the end of the 1980s, Burch had sold his company for a reported $60 Million.

He was still young and quite wealthy at a time when American culture became obsessed with making money. It was the era of the movie “Wall Street” and its declaration that “Greed is good.”

Burch was less concerned about making money and more interested in finding what to do next. As he recalled, “I went around to 20 people that were older than me, and I asked: What would you do?” At end of which Burch decided that he would become an investor in people and businesses.

Burch decided to create a branded financial services company, putting up the capital for what became Guggenheim Partners. Since then, he has launched, invested in, and often sold his stake in a wide range of companies, including office supply company Poppin, the Internet Capital Group (which has been called the poster child for the first internet boom), as well as the companies launching such tech-driven products as Jawbone, Jambox, and Powermat.

“I love the idea of creation [and] of working with great humans” Burch said. “I would go around and ask a lot of questions. Somehow, I got involved in some of the greatest companies very much in the beginning.” Burch’s ability to make early-stage capital investments, “really helped me to be able to always build things on my own; not take outside capital; and hopefully do a good job; and then sell those companies and move on.”

And then there was the success that was Tory Burch, the fashion and lifestyle brand with his then wife, about which Burch today says, “What happened with Tory was an amazing business and I think Tory’s an amazing person….The combination of she and I in the beginning, collaborating [by] having open and healthy discussions, bringing in the right people and being true to the customer [are what was] most important. With a business, if you really have a partner that you can work with together and build together and you can bring other people in as a collaboration, you’re much more successful,” Burch said.

“We were really fortunate,” Burch said, “When the logo shoe came out (which was really important to us), what really made us internationally was that we first opened at Bloomingdale’s in their main store. Everyone internationally came there, and they saw the shoe. They didn’t know who Tory Burch was, but they bought the shoe. And that’s how our international [business] first started. It was amazing.”

Since then, Burch has continued to invest in fashion brands including Solid & Striped, Staud, and Danielle Guizio to name but a few. “Fashion touches people’s lives, it actually makes women feel better,” Burch said.

Burch feels that around 2010 when the movie “The Social Network” came out, it was another hinge moment in the culture when suddenly what seemed to matter to people was start-up culture. Burch deepened his investment in entrepreneurs.

Over the course of his many investments and many ventures, Burch has discovered that he’s “pretty good at reading people and understanding why people do the things they do and what’s [their] unique talent.” When meeting with a company’s leader, Burch spends 80% of his time speaking with them about their life before college: What were their parents like? How was high school for them? What were they into then? What, if anything, made them different? How did they deal with rejection? How did they adapt to different environments?

In those conversations, Burch is searching for “a certain quality of specialness” — of tenacity, drive and caring. “I love to work with unique people who are passionate” who, often, are women. Beyond his investments or his ability to secure investments, Burch brings a talent for branding to his portfolio companies as well as supply chain sourcing, infrastructure, and systems experience and resources.

Among his current projects, there are three he’s very excited about. Green Lane, a chain of drive-through affordable salad stores that will first launch in Florida; Danielle Guizio’s fashion company; and a women’s skin care business.

However, it has not all been a success. “My biggest failure, but my favorite business would be a business called C Wonder.” Burch learned several important lessons from the failure: “Don’t try to grow too fast… Never let your ego or your future ambition drive your thought. I grew too fast, and I did too many different products.” Burch feels that if he had given the brand time to develop more organically, it would have been more successful. But the failure still hurts. “I’m very disappointed by it,” Burch told me. “It’s not about the money, it’s that the customer loved what we did, and I let them down.”

“The older I get the more introspective I get,” Burch told me. Burch believes that products can be a response or a salve to the modern age. “If you go on TikTok or your computer you can become overwhelmed by anxiety or depression or whatever,” Burch said. “We used to live in a time that was much slower.” Today, Burch feels, people are looking for experiences that are authentic and that will help them slow down. “I think that’s going to be the future.” Burch feels it’s the same reason gardening, growing vegetables, and other home activities have remained important even after the lockdown.

Burch has also extended his lifestyle branding to the field of hospitality, by first developing the Faena + Universe Hotel in Buenos Aires, whose share he eventually sold to business magnate Len Blavatnik. More recently, Burch has developed the Nihi resorts in Indonesia, which combine health and wellness spas with ultimate luxury.

The Niki Sumba resort, located on some 1400 acres on the west coast of Sumba Island, 250 miles from Bali, is consistently rated as one of the world’s best hotels and resorts, often being named “The Best of the Best.”

“It’s one of the most joyful things I’ve ever done in my life,” Burch told me, adding that Sumba “is the most beautiful place in the world.” Burch feels the beauty of the Island and the experience the hotel provides is a transformative experience for his guests. “It changes their lives,” he says.

As part of making the resort environmentally sustainable and to further the many local people who work at the resort and their indigenous culture, Burch created the Sumba Foundation which seeks to help “the people of Sumba prosper while preserving and respecting the cultural traditions of its people,” with projects focused on education, nutrition, health care, water and job training. “We support thousands of people” on the island, Burch said.

In all of his ventures, the challenge is: “What can you do to make people feel authentic, whether it’s in retail or fashion or sports.” For Burch, it is all experiential, or as he says, “all emotional.” If your product creates an emotion-producing experience (looking good, feeling good, feeling stylish, feeling smart, being healthy or environmentally conscious, or doing good) that stays with the consumer, Burch believes that then, “You’ll be successful.”

“Success is really simple,” Burch said, elaborating: “You just got to think about your customer first… that’s the most important thing. [Next] You have to think about the people that work for you and the [company’s] culture. Then you have to think about your [business] partner. And then, if you can put yourself last, then nine times out of ten, you’ll do just fine.”

Burch, who has admitted to being beset by insecurities when he was younger has embraced those feelings as part of what makes him human and that worrying about other people is part of what drives him to make the projects, products, and businesses he takes on more successful. At the same time, he is trying to be more introspective and mindful. “I just work at it every day.”

That being said, Burch is not slowing down. “Life is about learning. Curiosity is the driving source of successful humans.”