“I want to be able to leave room to be able to say, ‘No, there’s like real stuff to do out there beyond just doing a deal.’ And that does mean that I have to be more selective but hopefully, it also means that we’ll be able to create more change. Even though you aren’t one of my athletes, you still get to benefit from the work that we’re doing. And that is Nike changing our maternity policy and being able to look at a new contract like Athing’s and see that clause there that protects women’s maternity. That to me is like, ‘Yeah, I don’t ever have to represent you, but I’m glad I got to be a small part in putting that clause in there because that is for you. It is there for you so that you don’t have to go through the stuff that I went through with Allyson that I hope no one ever has to experience. So yeah, it’s a small group. It’s a tight-knit group. But hopefully, the change can spread beyond just our little group.”

Wes Felix is a track and field agent and also the co-founder and co-CEO of SAYSH. Just a few weeks ago, news about the new company went public when Time Magazine published a story that his six-time Olympic gold medalist sister Allyson and he were starting their own footwear company. The Saysh One lifestyle shoe ad the spikes that she wore at the Olympic Trials are the first two products to come out of the new venture. Wes shares the story about how this came to be, a little bit on how his sister took a chance on him to become an agent and represent her after his competitive days ended, how the split from Nike motivated him and Allyson to pick up the pieces and try something new. I got a lot of solid feedback from my episode with Tracksmith CEO and founder Matt Taylor so this is a good follow-up to that one.

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SHOW NOTES AND QUOTES

Working With A Smaller Team of Athletes

“I want to be able to leave room to be able to say, ‘No, there’s like real stuff to do out there beyond just doing a deal.’ And that does mean that I have to be more selective but hopefully, it also means that we’ll be able to create more change. Even though you aren’t one of my athletes, you still get to benefit from the work that we’re doing. And that is Nike changing our maternity policy and being able to look at a new contract like Athing’s and see that clause there that protects women’s maternity. That to me is like, ‘Yeah, I don’t ever have to represent you, but I’m glad I got to be a small part in putting that clause in there because that is for you. It is there for you so that you don’t have to go through the stuff that I went through with Allyson that I hope no one ever has to experience. So yeah, it’s a small group. It’s a tight-knit group. But hopefully, the change can spread beyond just our little group.”

Where Did the Name and Idea for Saysh Come From

“The pandemic gave me the time. For me, it was the first time that I didn’t have to travel since I was probably 17 years old. Every summer was spent on junior teams or whatever, international meets and stuff. When I started working with Allyson, then traveling with her. There was never time at home. The pandemic started and there was still the frustration around Allyson not having a footwear sponsor. That was really hard. The partnership with Athleta was going great. That was cool. But we would talk with all of these different footwear brands and nobody was interested or it just wasn’t fully getting done. One day I just kind of looked at her and I was like, ‘Well, what if we built this on our own?’ And she was like, ‘Build a shoe company?’ And I was like, ‘Well, yeah, what if we built a shoe company?’ 

About maybe five years ago, I did brand partnerships for Allbirds as a consultant. I remember looking at Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger, the founders and CEOs of Allbirds, and sitting there in the office up in San Francisco and thinking like, ‘Wow, this is so cool what they’re building.’ Then flashing back in that moment with Allyson and saying, ‘Well, wait a minute, Joey and Tim did it. We can do this.’ Like most crazy ideas it’s probably the same crazy idea when I thought I could represent Allyson. Like, you have no idea what you’re getting into when you start, which is a good thing. I think if you did, you probably would never start. But yeah, we just started exploring. 

And the process for me is always: Let’s just try. We’re going to hit a roadblock, and if it’s not worth it to keep pushing through, then we’ll stop. But like, what is it going to cost? It’s going to cost some time. We have more of that because we are not traveling. And as we started getting into it, we started to realize that there’s a much, much bigger issue here. Like this could actually be a real thing. 

The initial thought was just like, what if we made spikes for you. Then we realized, like, ‘Well, yeah that’s great. That helps you. You’re going to have shoes that’ll be kind of cool or whatever, but like that’s not creating real change.’ 

Then we spoke with a developer named Tiffany Beers and she was at Nike for 10 or 13 years, something like that. She worked in Tinker Hatfield’s group and she did the auto-lacing system on the Nike Mag. We had a conversation with her. We told her this big vision or goal or whatever. She made us believe it was possible. From a technical standpoint of someone who spent their career making shoes, she was like, ‘You guys could actually do this. These are the things you need to think about.’ And so then it became real. 

That’s when we started thinking about a name. We just weren’t sure how do you name something like that? It kind of feels silly and like you’re just a kid in your room playing make-believe. We’re going to name a company and a shoe brand. It doesn’t really feel real. 

But, one night I was sitting there listening to music with a couple of friends and I was just like: I just love the word wave. Like it’s just such a cool word. I’m also a very visual person. I write in all caps so I was looking at the word. ‘Huh interesting. Like the W, the A, the V, those are all the same. It’s just a V and it’s two V’s together and then it’s an upside-down V with a line in the middle and then it’s just a regular V…how interesting, you know. Well, you can’t call a company Wave but I like the way it sounds audibly. I like the way it looks visually. I like what it stands for and represents. And so then I was thinking, ‘Well, what, what, what type of waves are out there?’ Tsunami. Tidal. And then I was on this list on Wikipedia or something and the last one was a seiche wave. It’s from the French word sashay (to move back and forth.) And I was like, that’s interesting. Seiche. I thought that sounds cool but like written that’s not going to work. People are going to be so confused…It’s just going to be a disaster. It’s going to feel like you’re trying too hard. 

I looked at it phonetically and saw that it was spelled S-A-Y-S-H which was so interesting. 

It took me to this moment that my mom shared with me when I was like 13 or 14. She was talking about why she named my sister Allyson and spelled it the way that she spelled it. My mom was a third-grade teacher. If you look at a regular lined sheet of paper and you’re writing in lowercase, you have an “A” that sits above the line. The L-L sits above the line. The Y drops below the line. And then S-O-N sits above the line. And so you have three letters above the line, a dip below the line, three letters above the line. She just loved the way that it looked with the balance. That’s why she chose to spell it A-L-L-Y. When I was looking at the phonetic spelling of SAYSH. I’m like, ‘Oh, two letters y below the line, two letters. OK.’

The meaning of seiche waves is that they are found and enclosed bodies of water. There’s seismic or atmospheric pressure that moves the water to one side of the lake and it’s the same way that it’s this big, broad, powerful, smooth wave that moves the water back and restores balance. We really hope that SAYSH as a brand will – I wish I could say restore balance – help to create a balance from a gender equity standpoint within this footwear space or just within general women’s lifestyle brands. Period. Because what we found especially in footwear products is that they’re not made for women. They’re based on men’s feet. Women’s feet look just like men’s but there are differences between men’s and women’s feet. And for us, the real message is whether it’s a half a percent difference or ninety-nine percent difference. You deserve to have someone’s full focus on you and your foot. 

I think as women, you know, this feeling of being thrown away and overlooked is a very, very common feeling that I never had to think about from the privilege of being a man. It was just never on my radar. Going through that fight with Allyson with Nike about what we believe she was worth. It was the first time I got to really understand – even at such a limited level – but looking in my sister’s eyes and seeing the level of just worthlessness that she felt, the way that she felt like she wasted so much of her life by giving it to a company that didn’t value her. That level of heartbreak that I felt and the brokenness that I saw in her that her worth just completely just wasn’t there anymore. The mission then became: Other women can’t feel this way. So we can give them a tiny little bit of a feeling that you matter, you’re seen and you’re worth it. Then we’ll do it. 

Why Try To Build A Spike When Everyone Is Trying To Run In Nike Spikes Right Now

“So much of it was we have to make a product that is just as good or better but also, like stands for something that we actually believe in, right. We’re fortunate enough that we’re able to have that luxury. So if Allyson didn’t win another medal, she already won a lot. Right? So it’s not like this is your one chance to win a global championship and you need every advantage you possibly have. That’s just not the position we sat in and that was a really fortunate place to be in. I know we couldn’t have done this if she hadn’t accomplished all that she accomplished. So for us, it was very knowing and understanding that footwear is changing and they’ve invested millions and millions of dollars to do that. We were not going to be able to create a shoe that would compete on the same level as what Nike’s doing or what New Balance is doing or what Adi is doing. The times are reflecting that. You can see that, especially in the sprints now. It started in distance and we’re getting a little bit more used to that but there is no denying the shoes are making athletes faster. Without a doubt that is what it is. I have to constantly remind Allyson, ‘Just remember there is like an extra little piece to this.’ And that’s just the nature of it. The sport is changing. But I think where we looked at it was that we need to make something that you can be proud of, even if you don’t win. You have to be able to stand up there proud. It can’t be ‘Win at all costs.’ That just doesn’t work. That’s how this sport got to where it is right now. Win at all costs. That’s why we have the doping issues we have in the sport. Win at all costs. The fact that times matter so much to us and not just from like ‘Wow. We want to see how far the human body can go.’ Athletes are scared to run slow. They would rather not race. They’re scared to get beat because if they do get beat, now their appearance fee just went down. As a fan of the sport, to me, the sport is boring because I can’t watch the people run against the other best people. The only times I get to see that are the U.S. Olympic Trials, the U.S. championships and world championships, Olympic Games. That’s it. To me, those are the times I’m excited to watch the sport. We all sit there and we’re like, ‘Oh, these trials were amazing.’ Yeah. Because the best people actually competed against each other because they weren’t scared. The fear is not that these are not like absolute killers at the highest level. They’re not scared of competition. They’re scared of how they’re going to pay their bills. And that is on the sport and the product that we present. We just don’t do a good job there. 

And because of that, it leads to this need for people to feel like they can’t represent their sponsors who are supporting them because time is so important. The place is so important. Like, I just don’t know. That just feels so disheartening to me. I think it’s cool that the brands are letting athletes run in the Nike shoes. I think it’s cool that Nike is putting out their unbranded shoes because they are the best and all of those things. I just think it’s really sad that that’s what it’s coming to. 

That feels like such a miss for everybody all the way around. And it doesn’t feel like it’s moving our sport forward. It feels like it’s moving backward even if the records are dropping. We’ve had a lot of records that fell in the 80s. It did not propel our sport forward so this idea of just going faster by any means necessary, I think we’ve seen that before and it really handicapped us. It didn’t help us. I just hope we’re not going there again. But it was also a big reason why for us we said, ‘No. We’re going to build a spike and we’re going to build it around this brand and what we stand for. And if that means, you go two-tenths of a second slower. That’s what it’s going to be. But again, we were fortunate enough to be able to do that because Allyson has a lot of medals.”

The Impact of the Company

“I think what I’m most excited for is five years from now for there to be pressure on all the other brands to create shoes specifically for women. Not just say, ‘Hey, this is women’s sizing and a women’s color.’ But I hope that there is an education that’s going to say to women, ‘You’re wearing men’s shoes.’ Which doesn’t mean to run over to Saysh to buy ours. That’s not the goal. Nike sells way too many shoes. We couldn’t make enough shoes for her anyway. That’s not the goal is not how do we steal Nike’s customers? We’re doing two entirely different things. But, I do look forward to Nike saying or Adidas saying, ‘Hey, we need to make sure we are making shoes that are specifically for women based on women’s feet’ and that this idea of, ‘Oh, yeah, I’m women’s nine and men’s seven and a half’ like that, that goes away. This is a women’s shoe and this is a men’s shoe because I think women deserve it. Unisex should not be men’s sizing. That’s not unisex, that’s just called men’s sizing. It all just feels like a marketing gimmick. We just have to move away from that.”

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