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The OneHaas alumni podcast is honored to have Allan Spivack, philanthropist, community builder, and business leader, share his career path insights on today’s episode.
Allan spent much of his childhood fascinated by how his dad ran their family home furnishings business. But he was also curious about how businesses could be used for social good. After getting his JD MBA from Haas, he combined his two passions into RGI Home which he led for more than 30 years.
He and host Sean Li chat about Allan’s upbringing in New York, his unique business approach to RGI Home, and how a passion for community and social impact led him to study Middle Eastern politics and how that experience still influences his social entrepreneurship today.
*OneHaas Alumni Podcast is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*
Episode Quotes:
On his relationship with his father
“I remember pretty vividly spending a lot of time with my dad when I was quite young…My dad was not just an engineer, but he was also an inventor. So I would sit in his work room with him and marvel at the mystery of the inventions that he was coming up with. Then he fought for a couple of patents and I didn’t really know the content of what he was doing, but it looked so interesting and innovative. And that was my introduction to bringing a different point of view to product and his point of view as well.”
On his decision to get his JD MBA
“I’ve always been somebody who attempted to be a student always and this was a chance for me to catch up to what I missed when I was in undergrad.You know, having taken the kinds of classes that I thought would matter once I got into business the quantitative side of things. So, law was gonna teach me how to think one way, but I felt business school would teach me how to think a different way. And together, it would provide me with the best, most well-rounded education.”
Some of the challenges he faced running RGI Home
“How to run a business with no money. That was my first challenge. Along with that, running an international business by fax, no email. So you’re faxing overseas or whatever, and you know, people who don’t even speak your language and trying to figure out how to be able to integrate, you know, the various offices with the U.S. based offices.”
On his lasting legacy
“Since I was young, you know, I’ve always thought about transforming societies. I can never quite understand why people couldn’t figure out how to connect with each other. And also I thought that somebody like myself who had a fortunate upbringing and also had the fortune to be really educated, to go to places like Haas, build the business, had a responsibility to do more. So when I went to build a business, it was not just about industry. It was also about the ability to be able to give back to the communities that I was working in.”
Show Links:
- LinkedIn Profile
- RGI Home | History
- Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. by Ron Chernow
- Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins
Transcript:
(Transcripts may contain a few typographical errors due to audio quality during the podcast recording.)
[00:09] Sean: Welcome to the OneHaas Alumni Podcast. I’m your host, Sean Li. And today, we’re joined by Allan Spivack. Allan is a long-time Haas alum from the class of ‘79. And you look very sprightly. I wouldn’t guess you a day over 50. Allan is currently a philanthropist, writer, and community builder, after he recently sold his business, which we’ll dig into.
Want to give you a warm welcome to the podcast, Allan.
[00:39] Allan: Thanks, Sean. Thanks for having me.
[00:43] Sean: Allan, before we dig into the exciting stories of you building and selling your business, can you start us off with your origin story, where you’re from and how you grew up? You can go as detailed as you want.
[00:58] Allan: Sure. So, I was born in Brooklyn, moved to Long Island. My parents were pioneers and they brought us out to the suburbs when the suburbs were starting to be built outside of New York City. My dad was from Poland; my mom also from Brooklyn. And my dad came over when he was 16 from Poland and went to live with his grandparents and in the Lower East Side, in the tenements. He was fleeing what, at that point, was this rabid antisemitism. And his parents sent him over here to find opportunity. He went on to become an electrical engineer, went to City Colleg. And I later went to work for the government before going into the family business.
My mom was a renaissance woman. She started in the boutique balloon space and then moved on to run a couple of retail stores and, obviously, raised us, my two brothers and myself, and later became a sisterhood president. So, she was a woman beloved by many.
And so, that’s how we got started out at Long Island.
[02:07] Sean: That’s amazing.
[02:08] Allan: Yeah. I remember, pretty vividly spending a lot of time with my dad when I was quite young, now starting 6, 7, 8. My dad was not just an engineer, but he was also an inventor. So, I would sit in his work room with him and marvel at the mystery of the inventions that he was coming up with.
Then, he fought for a couple of patents. And I didn’t really know the content of what he was doing, but it looked so interesting and innovative. And that was my introduction to bringing a different point of view to product and his point of view as well.
I also spent a lot of time with my dad in his business. I started traveling with him, early on to his warehouse, his office. I wanted to learn more about what he was doing. So, I would travel, get up before dawn, travel with him to the warehouse, to his office, hang around with the guys, load trucks, fill out forms, and begin to understand, because he had a really diverse group of guys who were working for him, what community was about. So, that got me started with him.
[03:17] Sean: What kind of business was he in?
[03:18] Allan: So, he was in a family business. So, my great grandfather had started a home furnishings business in 1901, making wicker and rattan furniture on the streets of Brooklyn. And I was to be the 4th generation in that family business, but my dad came in after spending a couple of years in the engineering world and went on to head up this firm. And I started at a very tender young age to spend time with him.
[03:47] Sean: That’s pretty neat. So, I guess, growing up before you went off to college, were your parents very strict, or what kind of parents were they?
[03:56] Allan: My parents were traditional, in a lot of ways, but they were also curious about my curiosity. So, just to give you some context behind how things were developing when I got to be about 10 or 11 years old, I started asking my dad a lot of questions about his background and his experience. And it was at around that time that the tug of community and social impact started to pull me.
And there was one experience that I had right around the time of my bar mitzvah. Jewish kids go from childhood to adulthood at the age of 13 and usually have these really elegant affairs. And I decided, I said to my parents that I wasn’t really interested in a party. What I wanted to do was I wanted to go to the Middle East and seek to understand what was going on there. And there was a reason behind my interest in that, which will get you, but it showed that I was moving away from the traditional behavior of a kid in a middle-class community to the thinking that somebody who might be more interested in community and social impact would be involved with. So, that was what was happening to me when I was pretty young.
[05:08] Sean: Where did you go?
[05:09] Allan: We went to Israel. And so, I was talking about the event. I told my parents, don’t throw a party. We’ll have a luncheon. Go to Israel and donate the rest to charity.
So, we went to Israel. My dad had a sister there in Haifa. So, we went and traveled to Israel. And really, the whole idea was, obviously, spending some time with our family, but, really, I was beginning to take a look at the Middle East as an area that I needed to learn more about, because I was beginning to recognize that conflict resolution was something that I was really interested in.
[05:42] Sean: I presume this was before Israel offered the birthright Israel trip. I had a couple of friends that went on those trips. Have you heard of that before?
[05:53] Allan: Yeah, yeah. My son went on that.
[05:56] Sean: It’s really neat program. Everyone that’s come back from it had just amazing experiences and stories to share. That’s really neat.
[06:03] Allan: Yeah. So, I came back, and a couple of years later, decided to try out politics. So, I don’t know, 16, 17, and just sort of around the time I was able to thrive, I head over to the Democratic Nassau County Committee Office. And I meet a woman by the name of Karen Burstein.
Karen was a state senator at the time, and she was a real progressive, one of the brightest that I knew. And I wanted to test the waters in politics, see whether or not it was something I wanted to pursue. So, I worked with her for five years, writing legislation, doing press releases, all the things that legislative aides will do. And it was a fascinating time for me because, not only was she a great mentor and teacher, but, she also surrounded herself with some pretty cool women, two women, in particular, that were part of this group. Carol Bellamy, who was also a state senator, went on to head up UNICEF and the Peace Corps. Carol was the first person to be a volunteer and a director at the same time. She was selected by Clinton to do that.
And Liz Holtzman was a congresswoman. And she was on the Watergate Commission. So, this was the group of women that I was starting to learn about progressive politics from. And Carol was part of the LGBT community and so was most of her staff. And I was learning a lot during that time.
[07:29] Sean: Yeah. What I didn’t see on your LinkedIn was, what did you study for undergrad?
[07:34] Allan: Political science and environmental studies. One of the interesting things about business school or about my decision to go to business school is that I never took a business math or science class in undergraduate. And my focus was on politics and environmental studies. And that was my minor.
But within the political realm, I studied under a professor from Lebanon, Palestinian nationalism, because, as I was continuing to embark on this journey of understanding what was happening in the Middle East, and here’s this Jewish middle class guy who really feels this need to be able to broaden his reach and his understanding of the issues. So, I went to study what most people wouldn’t even think of, and that was really what was happening on the other side of the conversation. And that was the Palestinian question
[08:26] Sean: I noticed that you got your JD from the University of San Diego and you received your MBA from UC Berkeley. How did you do that around the same time, too?
[08:40] Allan: Yeah, after I left politics and graduated from the senior system in New York and decided to head to California. And because I was living in this frozen tundra called Albany I decided to find the most beautiful place in America to go to law school. And that was San Diego. And after I was in law school for about a month, I got wind of the joint program that a couple of universities were offering. I think Stanford was one, Berkeley was one, might have been a couple of others on the East Coast. And they were starting to integrate these two disciplines.
And I said that this would be good opportunity for me to balance my background and my education. And I’ve always been somebody who was attempted to be a student for, and always, and this was a chance for me to catch up to what I missed when I was in undergrad. Having taken the kinds of classes that I thought would matter once I got into business, the quantitative side of things.
And so, law was going to teach me how to think one way, but I felt business school would teach me how to think a different way. And together, it would allow me to really provide me with the best most well-rounded education.
[09:53] Sean: So, I saw, I noticed there was a gap between you starting RGI Home and when you graduated. What did you do in between, between the ‘80 and ‘86?
[10:03] Allan: Well, I actually worked for my family. So, I came back. Yeah, I came back from California.
[10:09] Sean: Yeah.
[10:09] Allan: Which in and of itself was a surprise. And so, I came back and started to apply to law firms and businesses and so forth. And because the JD MBA was such a new phenomenon, a lot of people didn’t know what to think of your educational background and wasn’t sure whether or not you were going to stay there with them for a year or 2 or 3 and then leave to go into industry but go into industry and go back to law. So, there was a lot of confusion. But really, what mattered to me was that, I went to see my dad in his warehouse. And I said, “Dad, it looks like you need help.”
And so, I decided to go and work with him in the family firm. So, I did that for about 5 years. And he had me doing all kinds of things. I started off negotiating teamster contracts. I actually was in the same community that John Gotti was living in. And so, I’m negotiating with some of his associates. I’m doing real estate deals for him. And now, I’m learning how to develop product. I’m going overseas to meet vendors and everything and learning how to sell. So, it was an amazing, amazing time.
[11:24] Sean: Wow.
[11:25] Allan: Fantastic experience.
[11:26] Sean: And then, from that, how did you go about launching RGI Home?
[11:29] Allan: Yeah. So, for those who understand the family business dynamic, I came to the conclusion that I wanted my dad to be my dad. And I also, at the time, was starting to see the markets were changing. And I wanted to employ some of the strategies and techniques that I picked up when I was at Haas and also some of the things that I was saying.
So, I had a couple of pillars that I built into this business. Creating a home as a destination was going to be one. Also, because I watched my dad struggled so much with banks and so forth, I was going to a business that never borrowed from a bank, would not leverage, would not borrow from investors. I was going to run a business that would run off of internally generated cash flow. And also, I would build a just-in-time business. I was watching Toyota build their inventory model around just in time. And I said, maybe I could do that and create the quintessential risk averse. Business risk aversion was the mantra of finance majors at Haas. It’s all I ever used to hear. And eventually, it sunk in.
And so, I was building this risk averse business. But there were a couple of other things that came to mind. One was sustainability. I thought that consumers would turn away from man-made products, from synthetic to natural products. I started talking about sustainability in the mid-’80s, which was pretty early in that conversation.
I also wanted to bring social entrepreneurship into the firm. I wanted to be able to do more than just run a business. I wanted to apply the business to ways that would allow me to not just make a profit but help to support community and do the things that I thought I wanted to do in my life.
And last one of the last pillars was data. One course at Haas that I remember most as being the most meaningful to me was operations research. Now, I don’t know what they call it today, but it’s all about data. It’s a use of data to inform future decisions.
And I had no idea what was going on in that class other than to be told that, “Look, take everything that you know from the past, then apply it to everything you think about in the future.” And data became a really important vehicle for me in an industry that was just becoming relevant.
So, it was a way for me to really connect the dots between Haas and the experience that I was having in my business. So, that’s how RGI got formed.
[14:09] Sean: I couldn’t find anywhere what RGI stood for. That is an acronym, I presume.
[14:16] Allan: Yeah. So, that’s a great question. And it actually stands for my great grandfather. Reuben Greenspan was my great grandfather. And he was, of course, the one who started the original family business. But I was looking around to find a name that would be memorable. And I turned to IBM. And I said, “Wow, that’s easy to remember. So, why don’t I name this after my great grandfather because I was inspired by his work and his devotion to his craft?” And say, I’ll name it after him, but I’ll name it also after IBM, so people would never forget how to spell it.
[14:57] Sean: What was the I for?
[14:59] Allan: International.
[15:00] Sean: Oh, international. Okay. I love it. So, is the photo under the history, is that your grandfather?
[15:06] Allan: That was me.
[15:07] Sean: Okay. I was going to say that that looks like you.
[15:11] Allan: That was me on the truck. So, that was the time that I was going to visit to work on my dad’s warehouse. And that was me loading a truck. I might’ve been seven or eight years old then.
[15:24] Sean: Just such an awesome black and white photo.
[15:28] Allan: Yeah.
[15:28] Sean: Anyone who’s listening and they’re curious about this photo, most adorable kid, go to RGIhome.com/history. Yeah, it’s, it’s really amazing.
Okay. I have to ask you a business question because I regret not asking this question, but, you had mentioned earlier that you really adopted the just-in-time methodology in terms of inventory. And that’s not easy. Initially, when you had mentioned that your grandfather manufactured things or made things in New York, that made sense to me. But now, you’re talking international trade, global shipping, boats, freight. How did you manage it? What were some secrets to managing just-in-time successfully?
[16:13] Allan: There were a couple of things. To me, maybe one of the most important aspects of that strategy where my teams overseas. I built teams in Hong Kong, later in China, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. So, I had offices in each one of these regions. And I would hire these really smart operators or smart creatives or people who have significant experience in different aspects of production. Then, I would build those teams and they would help me watch over this. And I would set the model to how it would work, and I would train my teams how to build it. I would train vendors on how to build it, and then work together with customers, to be able to integrate, both the product piece, as well as the supply chain piece.
The other aspect, and Asian offices were crucial to being able to execute on that model. But Haas was also crucial because it wasn’t so much a content that I was getting out of that experience. It was the discipline. It was the ability to be able to think in ways that was necessary in order for me to both quantify, because I was dealing with pricing. I was dealing with production. I’m dealing with supply chain. So, you have to compartmentalize but also understand every facet of it.
And so, it was a model that both came to me. And it wasn’t perfect. I made a lot of mistakes along the way. But eventually, we figured it out and got it right. And it worked pretty well.
[17:45] Sean: That’s what I like to hear. Trial and error, that’s the entrepreneurial way.
[17:50] Allan: Lots of mistakes along the way.
[17:53] Sean: Because that’s really not easy. I had a e-commerce business and I also was pretty staunch about having a just-in-time inventory process. And it took us a while to figure it out, similarly. I mean, you’re at a much larger scale, but, for us, it was just shipping out of Guangzhou, out of China.
[18:14] Allan: Yeah, doing the just-in-time, another retailer, Toyota was one, but it was one organization. But Zara was somebody I was watching also, Zara, the fashion company.
[18:26] Sean: The clothing company, yeah.
[18:28] Allan: Yeah. And Zara was doing it in fashion. So, I thought if they could do it in fashion, maybe I can do the same thing in home.
[18:36] Sean: What would you say were some of your most challenging and, at the same time, proudest moments?
[18:42] Allan: Yeah. So, challenging was figuring out how to run a business with no money. That was my first challenge. Along with that, running an international business by fax, no email. So, you’re faxing overseas or whatever, and people who don’t even speak your language and trying to figure out how to be able to integrate the various offices with the U.S.-based offices. So, that was a big challenge for me.
But actually, the biggest challenges didn’t happen at the beginning. They happened at the end. In 2016, with the change of administration, the trade war without China started to ramp up and tariffs came into the picture. Later, just a few years after that, COVID. And then, a year or so after that, supply chain.
So, I was managing all of that in the context of this global business that I was running and having to re-engineer and jockey according to what particular challenge I was facing at any one time.
[19:48] Sean: Wow.
[19:48] Allan: So, there was a lot to do it. Proud? The proudest moments: courage to start a business, the stamina to keep up the work of our teams were amazing. Our Asian teams, our U.S. teams as well, but our Asian teams that was about 80% of our group, they were great performers.
And the differences that we were able to make in people’s lives and whether it be on the manufacturing side of the community building side, of philanthropic side.
[20:21] Sean: That’s a good segue into, I think, what I feel like will be a lasting legacy for you, is your social entrepreneurship side. Can you talk and share a little bit about that?
[20:33] Allan: Yeah. So, since I was young, I’ve always thought about transforming societies. I can never quite understand why people couldn’t figure out how to connect with each other. And also, I thought that somebody like myself who had a fortunate upbringing and also had the fortune to be really to be educated, to go to places like Haas, build a business, had a responsibility to do more. So, when I went to build a business, it was not just about industry. It was also about the ability to be able to give back to the communities that I was working in. So, my goal was to build these models.
But it came to me really early. Because of my dad’s background and my family back on both during the war and afterwards, I felt this pull in this target community when I was really young. And so, I started doing all kinds of things, started working with make a wish, being a wish giver. I worked with five ventures, teaching incarcerated and formerly incarcerated individuals entrepreneurial skills. Got the sky working in China with orphanages and so forth.
So, I had a wide range of different things that I was doing. And I did so because I felt I could and I felt that I had a need to participate in the community so much I was working in.
[21:56] Sean: Yeah. There’s one sentence on the website that just really stuck with me on RGI Home that you’ve written. It says there’s no shortage of need, just a shortage of inspired ways to deal with them. That sat with me for a bit after I read it for a couple of days. It is so true.
I resonate with that statement greatly, because I feel exactly the same way. I see people in need. And some of these challenges that are out there are not easy. I might’ve mentioned that on the podcast before, for any listeners listening, but early on, when I started the podcast production business, I worked with Philippines as well. Over half of our team is in the Philippines. And I just remember, one of my first team members, she’s still with us today, four years later, God bless. Her pandemic was locking down, right? Kids were forced to stay home. Schools are shutting down. And I just remember her asking me, can I work a different shift? Can I work a night shift? Herd night shift, right?
And I was like, why? And I was like, “Sure, you can work whatever shift you want. It’s a remote job. It didn’t really matter to me.” But she said, “Oh, it’s because you’re in the daytime. We only have one computer. And my two kids need to go to school, right?” I thought it’s crazy. I asked about how much a laptop costs to get things going. And I just said, take this as an early bonus,” get her to get them two laptops. It’s a small gesture, very small gesture. And at the same time, for some reason, and it felt easy, when I remember telling other people about it, they were just like, “Why would you do that?”
It’s like, because as a business person, there’s kind of saying it from their business mindset. It’s just like you can’t do that for all your employees. And I was just like, “Can you not? Why wouldn’t you?” Is it directly going to impact our top line? No, absolutely not. But is it going to make it a better world? Potentially. That’s why we’re building businesses. I think I really believe that true entrepreneurs, and I say that very consciously, true entrepreneurs out there solving problems to make the world better, not to make more money. Money is a consequence of you doing good things, right? It’s one of the measures, one of the many measures of success.
But that’s really interesting that you talk a lot about social entrepreneurship. And it’s very inspiring to me.
[24:29] Allan: Yeah. I would say that… I’ve said this also on the website. I was a dreamer. I used to see things and ask, what? And then I used to see the consequence of these things, and I’d ask, why? And it was through that inquiry that I began to find my purpose. I had this intense curiosity to see equity in life’s events. And when I didn’t, it disappointed, but it didn’t cause me to stop. I just kept going.
And you talk about this one woman in the Philippines and getting on a laptop. Every day, when I woke up, I was thinking about another way I could help my team, not in industry, but their kids, their families. And I wasn’t always successful. I didn’t always hit the mark with them, but it was always on my mind. Because, look, I came from a privileged background. And I felt it was my responsibility not to leave everybody behind. I just thought it wasn’t fair. So, I did the best I could to keep it along.
And the reason why I sold the business the way I did and as I did was because it would allow me to embark down this next path of philanthropy and community building that I think is going to be really important as this next chapter in my life.
[25:57] Sean: Tell us more.
[25:58] Allan: Well, I’ve been really involved with Haas. Actually, over the last decade, I went to Laura Tyson and Lyons. And I started at Haas building out the social impact investing prize. And we started that about 7, 8 years ago. And I was supporting fellowships for students who were coming in the Center for Responsible Business. And students had a social impact or orientation. And there were some phenomenal people who were coming through that door. More recently, funding a sustainable business research prize that is affiliated with the center for responsible business. You could check that out on their website, which is their first award was relating to a biodiversity risk. And today, I’m working with this college of letters and science on what they call the chancellors’ dialogue fellows.
And that was inspired by my very, very early experiences and dealing with the issues relating to the Middle East. And I’ve been talking to Chancellor Chris and others about direction for conversations around the Middle East. And really, the idea behind the Chancellors Dialogue Fellows is to find a path forward for people who are desperate to understand the origins and the conflict and anxious to overcome the stalemate that exists today, people who are anxious and angry that can’t figure this out. And really, the idea behind the Chancellor Dialogue Fellows is to give them a safe place to have this conversation and to stimulate discussions and figure out a way to overcome conflict.
So, I got the support of the chancellor and others on the campus. And this is one of the major projects that I’m going to be working on as well.
[27:47] Sean: I really like what you shared about holding safe space for conversations and supporting community because it’s building community and supporting it because it’s, I don’t know if it’s human nature. I think it is human nature to want to simplify things happening in the world, right? But the reality is everything is multi-layered. On that note of history, any books that have inspired you?
[28:14] Allan: Yeah, there were many, but two that came to mind. Titan, which is Ron Chernow’s book on John D. Rockefeller, and Standreau, the Consummate Capitalist. The reason why I read it was because I was drifting around in business. And really, I’d not been driven yet to figure out how to run a business of scale. And I realized, if I wanted to do something with my life to invest, if I really wanted to invest and to build an enterprise, I needed to understand what that meant. So, I figured I’d go to the top and read about Rockefeller.
And he told me about capitalism, but more so I figured that capitalism with the value systems that I was acquiring would be a great combination. So, Titan was a great book. But the most important business book I ever read was Good to Great by Jim Collins. In Good to Great, there were some amazing aspects to that book. But the one element that, to me, was the most important was the culture of discipline. It was a concept that he talked about, where he talked about disciplined thought and disciplined behavior leads to great performance. And he had this one statement where he said that firms that intersect this disciplined behavior, together with the ethic of entrepreneurship, result in a magical alchemy of great performance.
And what that said to me was that you need to do only two things to be a great performer, but you need to do those two things super well. And you need to be focused. So, Good to Great was another one of my favorite reads.
[30:02] Sean: That’s so interesting. So, last question, I just have one more question, which is, how can listeners connect to support your projects?
[30:10] Allan: I think you have to stay tuned on things that are happening. I think you connect to the CRB is running the sustainable business research prize and there’s a lot of activity around that. And the Chancellor Dialogue Fellows is going to be a lot of content coming out.
[30:27] Sean: Stay tuned.
[30:28] Allan: Stay involved.
[30:29] Sean: Yeah. Sounds great. Anything else that you wanted to share that I didn’t get a chance to ask you?
[30:35] Allan: No, other than Haas was an amazing experience and meant everything to me in my career. So, go, Bears!
[30:43] Sean: Go, Bears! Thanks for coming on the podcast today, Allan.
[30:47] Allan: You bet.
[30:50] Sean: Thanks again for tuning in to this episode of the OneHaas Podcast. If you enjoyed our show today, please hit that Subscribe or Follow button on your favorite podcast player. We’d also really appreciate you giving us a five star rating and review. If you’re looking for more content, please check out our website at haas.fm. That’s spelled H-A-A-S.F-M. And there you can subscribe to our monthly newsletter and check out some of our other Berkeley Haas podcasts.
OneHaas Podcast is a production of the Haas School of Business and produced by University FM. Until next time. Go, Bears!