Issue 063
June 2010
Fueled by the passion of the company’s founders, TapouT president Marc Kreiner predicts nothing short of global domination.
Marc Kreiner remembers well the day he decided to forego a long-planned retirement in order to partner up with a pair of high-energy, passion-filled entrepreneurs by the name of ‘Mask’ and ‘Punkass’. It was a little more than four years ago.
“You can imagine I was getting ready to sell my company and retire because I've got a little girl, and I was going to spend a lot of time with my wife and daughter,” says Kreiner. “Then all of a sudden, I tell my wife about these guys I met. When she first heard their names, ‘Punkass’ and ‘Mask’, her jaw dropped! After some ‘over-the-top’ times during my career in the record business, she had every right to suspect I was at it again!”
First impressions
Kreiner's relationship with Dan ‘Punkass’ Caldwell and Charles ‘Mask’ Lewis, the co-founders of the TapouT brand, began many years earlier. A renaissance man and serial entrepreneur who was once one of the most powerful record executives during the disco era (he was nicknamed ‘the man with the golden touch’), Kreiner owned a company that produced late-night infomercials.
“I originally met them when I had a major infomercial company based out of Beverly Hills,” says Kreiner, who was introduced to the pair by MMA promoter T Jay Thompson, who owned Hawaii’s Super Brawl event. “My company then had the first MMA infomercial on TV. Content is king, and T Jay, who is a close friend of mine, he said, ‘Why don’t we do an MMA infomercial, because with the sport, there are a lot of people that would like to buy the tapes.’”
Kreiner ran upwards of $2 million dollars a month as a result of his late-night 30-minute ad campaign and, based on Thompson’s advice, Kreiner agreed to meet with the two charismatic heads of TapouT in order to discuss some kind of co-promotion venture. “T Jay said to me, ‘you've got to meet these guys. They have a clothing company, maybe because of all the money you’re spending in advertising, maybe it will benefit their brand.’” Thompson suggested that TapouT could provide a beanie for each sale – Kreiner agreed, and a meeting was soon arranged.
“On the day of our meeting, in comes ‘Punkass’ and ‘Mask’ into my office – you can only imagine my first impression,” he says. “Charles walked in screaming, ‘Marco Polo! Marco Polo!’ Here I am in my office, with a couple of hundred employees just outside, and in it is this guy with face paint on and ‘Punkass’, who looked like an East LA gangster – complete with a bandana around his head and everything.”
Kreiner remembered how he and Lewis immediately built a bond, though their initial meeting had little to do with either the TapouT brand or the late-night infomercials. “During our talk, I quickly realized Charles was both artistic and very creative and, like me, he was driven by music.” At the time, Charles and Kreiner discussed each and every one of the gold and platinum records that adorned his office – mementos of his famed career in the music industry. “After being responsible for either discovering, promoting and/or marketing over 85% of all the disco groups in the world, with over 250 gold and platinum records on the wall to show for it, I thought to myself that I had just discovered one of the most talented artists I would ever meet in this lifetime.”
The passion and the dream
The conversation eventually turned from music to MMA and MMA apparel, and Kreiner struck a deal with his new business associates. TapouT would provide 10,000 beanies as a bonus to customers who purchased Thompson’s Super Brawl tapes. Little did Kreiner know how much he was asking of the struggling entrepreneurs. Despite the challenge, Mask and Punkass delivered.
“Initially, I don’t know what it was, but when I met Mask and Punkass, I instantly fell in love with them. There was magic! They shared their passions and their dreams.
“To this day, I still have no idea where they got the money. I had no idea they were just a few years out of living out of their car. I’m sure they made many sacrifices to survive. The bottom line is, that following Friday, they did what they said they were going to do and came in with 10,000 beanies.”
Over time, the arrangement developed into a friendship, and Kreiner began to serve as a mentor to Lewis. “Charles used to text me at least 25 times a day. I’ve never been texted by anyone in my life that much. He used to ask me questions and affectionately call me ‘Marco Polo’, then he would call me and ask me certain business questions and said, ‘I hope I don't disturb you.’ Instantly, I liked these guys and didn't mind helping them out.”
The march toward a billion-dollar company
Years later, and after much prodding, Kreiner decided to make the 160 mile round trip – no small feat for the executive who had never driven more than a mile to work – and check out TapouT’s operations. Lewis wanted to show off what he had accomplished so far, and he was looking for Kreiner's input on where to go next.
“Long story short, I ended up coming out to their warehouse, and I was shocked,” says Kreiner. “They only had seven employees working part-time in 100+ degree weather packing T-shirts. They had about 2,000 square feet, with no air conditioning. It was during that meeting that Charles and Dan continued to share their dream and their passion for the sport – Charles and Dan knew in their hearts that MMA was going to be the biggest sport, that they were going to have their own TV show, and that TapouT would one day be a billion-dollar company.”
While it would be easy to write off the budding entrepreneurs, Kreiner believed in them both. Kreiner felt that with his past experience, coupled with the passion and dreams of Lewis and Caldwell, there would be no stopping them: “When I first met the guys from Chic in the disco business – two kids that were living on the street, basically – they told me they were going to be as big as The Beatles,” says Kreiner. “They ended up being almost as big as The Beatles. I believed in ‘Mask’ and ‘Punkass’. I believed their passion. I believed their drive.”
Kreiner was ready for retirement and preparing to sell his infomercial business. But Lewis’ passion and drive appealed to Kreiner. Soon, ‘Mask’ made an offer Kreiner simply couldn't refuse – no matter how much sense it would have made to walk away. “Charles came to me and asked if I’d be interested in being a partner with them. He said to me, ‘I really think that you’d be a big part and a big help for us. With your business vision and our marketing abilities, what if we all put this together?’ I knew right then and there that with their vision, their hope, their passion, their dream – coupled with my experience, my passion, my abilities – I knew that we would get a shot – just a shot. It doesn’t mean anything more than that. It’s just a shot at making a dream a reality.
“I knew that for me to do that would take 100% commitment and, when I went back to my wife, she joked that she wanted me to go take a drug test. But the rest is history.”
As TapouT continues its rapid march toward Lewis’ vision of a billion-dollar company, Kreiner finds himself at the center of another successful venture. It’s an astounding leap made in just four short years. “Charles said ‘We’ll give you exactly what we get; we’ll split our salaries,’” Kreiner says. “I said, 'Well how much do you guys get a month?' He said, ‘$2,000’. That would barely cover my gas to go back and forth the 160 miles a day! But I felt their dream, I felt their passion, and I knew we were going to get a shot. Since I’ve become a part of TapouT, we’ve gone from having a 2,000 square foot workspace to having a 50,000 square foot compound, ‘TapouT World Headquarters’, which houses over 125 employees. We did upwards of $200 million last year. We’re on target to be a multi-billion dollar company.”
"We're going to go conquer the world"
The road to success hasn’t been completely clear. Lewis’ sudden death in March 2009 proved an emotional loss for TapouT. Nevertheless, Kreiner says Lewis’ vision carries on today. “The loss was tremendous,” he says. “He was our leader, our guide, our visionary, our friend. But I was very blessed to spend three years with him. Charles shared a lot with me and he shared so much with everyone around him. We’ve come to learn and live his vision and his tradition.
“When we lost him, we all mourned, and we mourned for the period we did, and we all got together as a company, and we just decided that we were going to fulfill his dream and his passion. I’ve never seen people work harder from that day forward.”
Kreiner credits the importance of TapouT’s strong relationship with the Ultimate Fighting Championship – he is very thankful of Dana White and Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta’s support and praises their “vision” in developing the sport. TapouT also enjoys a featured role as the official apparel provider of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’, a primary reason the company will eventually reach its ultimate sales goals – and just as the UFC is targeting worldwide expansion as its means of maintaining a position as the world’s leading mixed martial arts organization, TapouT also eyes global domination.
“Now we’re going to go conquer the world. We’re going to go do international. We feel that between international and domestic, we'll have a multi-billion dollar company in the next 18-24 months. Through our website, which is one of the most successful websites in the world and does millions of dollars of business, we ship a substantial amount of product worldwide, but now with the UFC traveling around the world to places like Australia and Germany and the UK and Abu Dhabi, we’re just basically following their footsteps. They really open up the country with the fans, and we just basically go behind. We are the only authentic brand. We’re the Nike of the sport.”
While TapouT continues to expand exponentially under Kreiner’s watch, the exec promises the company will never get away from its original foundation. Lewis believed that grass-roots support of budding mixed martial artists was a cornerstone for success, and Kreiner insists that vision remains strong. “That's 100 percent our foundation. Without that, there is no TapouT. We’re grassroots. We’re all about supporting the new fighters coming in. Nothing has changed in that area at all. Without that foundation, we have nothing.”
While Marc handles matters in the boardroom, ‘Punkass’ and Tim ‘Skyskrape’ Katz (the third original member of the TapouT crew) can almost always be found out on the road, whether it is Octagonside at the UFC or meeting fans at expos. Interacting with the fans is something that TapouT do better than anybody else, and it is this factor they take into account when measuring their success. “Our success is not weighed by the amount of dollars we make. Our success is weighed upon how many people’s lives we touch, which is what Charles always said. We’re not a T-shirt company. We’re not an apparel company. We’re the brand that touches so many people’s lives.”
Kreiner has overseen an expansion of astronomical proportions in his four years with TapouT, and though he was on the verge of retirement when he accepted the role, Lewis’ passion has now become his own, and Kreiner doesn’t foresee himself walking away any time soon. “I love TapouT,” Kreiner says. “I love the passion, I love the people I work with, and I have no vision of retiring anytime soon. I could, but I don’t want to. I love what I do. There’s nothing I could see myself doing other than working with the team that I’ve got for years and years to come.”
As for Kreiner’s wife, “She’s proud and amazed, and more important, my daughter and my wife are now mixed martial arts fans.”
The TapouT team
Kreiner attributes the success of the company to his hardcore team of employees, many of whom wear TapouT and ‘Believe’ tattoos with no small sense of pride. The company is bombarded with daily calls and emails from people hoping to get a job with TapouT, whether designing T-shirts or modeling bikinis! This makes recruiting a straightforward task – in 2009, Kreiner hired key figures from top sportswear brands such as Roxy and Quicksilver to further strengthen the growing apparel division. “Our entire team is like a second family to us,” says Marc. “We consider our team to be the best of the best in the Industry. It’s one big family that makes this giant machine work!”
Driving the sport forward
TapouT sponsor over 50 of the world’s best fighters from promotions such as the UFC, WEC and Strikeforce, showing that their passion and commitment to the sport go further than simply slapping their logo on a pair of shorts. The TapouT team has always had a vision to help the sport develop and grow, and they hope to highlight this work with the short film ‘The Future of MMA’.
The film, which can be found on the TapouT website, is a ten-minute documentary that focuses on the Ruffo brothers, eight and nine-year-old future stars who can be found on the mat of the TapouT Training Center in Las Vegas. The documentary shows that MMA has a bright future and that with TapouT‘s support, the talent will grow tremendously over the years.
Five things you didn't know about Marc Kreiner
- Marc is a serial entrepreneur and has owned numerous multi-million dollar companies in telecommunications, advertising, and even a luxury limo service!
- To mark the launch of his Ocean Records label in 1979, Marc held a party in a club fitted out with an erupting volcano, a tank full of mermaids, a marching band and six midgets in scuba gear!
- A cigar lover, Marc smokes only premium Cuban cigars and has a taste for limited edition smokes, like this box of Che Guevara No. 5. Superiores, a limited edition humidor that would set you back a cool $10k.
- Marc has a 20-foot statue of The Incredible Hulk protecting the entrance to the executive offices and the world’s largest jack-in-the-box in his boardroom – when the handle is cranked, a scary clown pops out!
- Marc once appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show, and even has a personal letter of thanks from her framed upon his wall.
