Allbirds Admits Mistakes

Allbirds provides a good example of accountability and humility. No executive likes to discuss disappointing quarterly results, but Joey Zwillinger, co-founder and co-CEO, admitted mistakes, which could improve his credibility for future plans.

On the Q4 2022 earnings call, Zwillinger acknowledged “missteps”:

However, in this journey, we also made some missteps:

1) We overemphasized products that extended beyond our core DNA, and as a result, some products and colors have had narrower appeal than expected.

2) Because we were spending significant time and resources on these new products that did not resonate well, we under-invested in our core consumers’ favorite products.

3) Finally we did not increase our brand awareness to the level that we anticipated.

These communications aren’t quite “bad-news message” because they aren’t announcements, which is why Zwillinger is smart to discuss problems openly: they are already quite obvious to investors. One of my favorite lines is, “As we made those adjacent product development decisions, we unfortunately lost a bit of sight of what our core consumer fell in love with us for in the first place and what they continue to want from us.”

With Zwillinger’s humility—his willingness to admit and learn from mistakes—he inspires confidence that Allbirds can get back to its core products and customers. Zwillinger makes the mistakes sound fixable; they sound like an over-reach that didn’t work out, a bad color choice that can be painted over. Other brands might have a tougher time communicating failure if problems are insurmountable or decisions are irreversible.