Issue 105

September 2013

Both Bad Boy and its CEO, Robin Offner, have Brazil close to their hearts

As CEO of global fight wear brand Bad Boy, Robin Offner has one simple rule. “Don’t do business with people that you don’t want staying in your house.” It means, for one, all athletes who represent the company, such as UFC 205lb contender Alex Gustafsson, are good citizens. And having seen the label’s iconic, glaring eyes go from success to success for over 20 years, the principle has clearly been kind to Offner and the US-born business with a Brazilian-bred MMA core.

Robin, 51, and Bad Boy found part of that prosperity on the beaches of Brazil in the early ‘90s. That was when the San Diego-based extreme sports brand and its Brasileiro business partner’s relationships with a clutch of Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitors unsuspectingly dug the foundations of an MMA empire. As well as continuing the US branch’s tradition of catering to the surf and skate market, that new Brazilian licensee brought several jiu-jitsu practitioners, who were also involved in the local surfing scene, under the company banner. 

“Right out of the gate they started sponsoring Rickson Gracie and other jiu-jitsu fighters,” explains Robin. The marriage between the two worlds was an instant success, as testified to by Bad Boy’s hefty share of the modern MMA apparel market.

Endorsements with early-era MMA fighters such as Rickson, Wallid Ismail and making the world’s first vale tudo shorts (initially on the production line of a Brazilian bikini manufacturer) put Bad Boy on the fight business map via a drawing pin firmly pressed into the South American nation.

And just as Brazil has been positive for his company (“It’s part of our DNA,” says Offner), it’s been good for Robin personally. His wife, with whom he has a two-year-old son, is Brazilian. With a wry smile, he confesses: “I’m particularly fond of Brazil.” 

As with many who run a worldwide company that has an operating presence in places as far flung as Australia, Japan and Russia, Robin’s time is scarce. “I don’t have an average day. I probably go through customs, what, 40 times a year?” he guesses. 

“I travel between 100 and 180 days a year. Usually internationally. There are times where I will be in eight countries in 11 days.” But no matter where he is in the world, be it at home in San Diego or an ocean away in a hotel room as part of closing a business deal, Robin always makes time for his son. That could mean leaving the office early to visit the beach or asking the internet to do the leg work.

“For the 21st century business traveler, Skype saves the traveling parent,” says Robin. “Even if I am across the planet I can still look at my little boy go to sleep. ”

Even with the personal hardships, and he notes how physically testing constant air travel can be, running Bad Boy is a job Robin loves.

“People dream about seeing what I see on a monthly basis.” Not least because it affords Robin an opportunity to indulge in one of his life passions: extreme skiing. 

He describes waterskiing in the Grand Canyon as “the most amazing experience I’ve ever had.” And if he’s not spending his downtime there, he could be skiing the mogels of the Bad Boy ski area, Mt. Waterman, he and some friends own just outside Los Angeles.

After all that Bad Boy has grown to become, it’s remarkable to consider it remains a family-owned business which began making surf shorts under the brand name Platypus Wear. It’s still the company’s legal name, and also owns the Bad Girl and Life’s A Beach brands. 

Robin was working on a doctorate in literature (with a focus on Shakespeare and Aristotelian theory) when he moved to California from Chicago in 1986 to work in the family business. After deciding to go to law school in the late 1980s and working as a trial lawyer for years, he took the helm of the company. 

Surprisingly, he opines that his academic studies better prepared him for business than did his law degree. “What I studied when I was at graduate school was the dynamics between written work and its historic audience,” he says. “How did Shakespeare communicate with an emerging theatrical audience in Elizabethan England? How did the Greeks use the new medium of theater to communicate with its society? This helped me understand how to communicate with business cultures all over the world.”

After all this expansion, accomplishment and time, and despite Robin personally heading the company for over 10 years, family still plays a remarkably integral role in his day-to-day business life.

He reflects: “Any time I make a decision I think, ‘Would my mom and dad be proud of me in this decision that I make?’ What I’ve learned is, in business don’t do what’s convenient, don’t do what’s easy; do what you know is the right thing to do. And if you follow that motto, in my experience, good things happen to you.”